


From Way Beyond the Stars

by orphan_account



Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Alien AU, Alien!Miller, Alternate Universe, Angst and Fluff, Eventual Smut, Loosely based in canon, M/M, Mating Cycles, Tentacle Sex, miller is not a great person unfortunately, non-human anatomy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:20:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23388016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: James Holden is a young man living and working on a farm with his parents. Humanity has begun expanding into space, but he has no interest in that-he just wants to maintain his family’s land and live a life grounded on Earth.Miller is an alien originally from Phoebe who crash-lands on James’s family farm. James is horrified and fascinated by him.
Relationships: Jim Holden/Joe Miller
Comments: 11
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is almost completely outside the canon of the books/show and is basically an excuse for me to write Miller with really weird alien biology. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

James Holden had never been outside Montana in his life. In fact, he’d rarely been outside of the stretch of farmland owned by his family. He’d been homeschooled all his life, there were no other children for miles around, and besides the occasional doctor’s appointment or family gathering, he rarely got to see anyone besides his parents. James had never seen a problem with this, of course. He loved his parents dearly. Maybe he’d go out into the world when he was older, once his parents had passed on and the house and the farm were his and he wanted someone else to share it with. In the meantime, he was content to just have himself and his family and the beautiful stretch of farmland and forest surrounding them.

In recent days, however, James and his family had been receiving some unexpected company.

Living in a family co-op had always gained them some scrutiny. James remembered being a young child, skipping around the farm in his overalls while being closely followed by a news crew reporting on the curiosity that was his family. When he was that young, he’d assumed it was because people were confused by eight people all being married to each other, since most families he’d seen on television or in books only had two parents. This was likely where the curiosity had begun, but as James had gotten older, he’d learned the more important reason for their scrutiny. As the biological child of all eight parents, James Holden was the sole heir to all the land his parents held. The house, the farm, the woods surrounding the property-all of it was going to be his, and his alone unless he found someone he wanted to share it with.

Concerns of some kind of fraud were being brought up, and representatives from all sorts of law enforcement departments were sent to figure out just why on Earth these people would entrust a small national park to one man. Not that James wasn’t responsible enough to maintain that land. He spent much of his waking hours pacing the farm, tending to water filtration and soil fertilisation systems, making sure each solar panel was oriented in the right direction, inspecting rows of tomatoes and cabbages for signs of insects or rot. At night he tended to walk the grounds, not to inspect anything but simply to enjoy the experience of being in that sprawling field of greenery, one of the last of its kind on the entire planet.

James had the perfect life, and now people were coming to ruin it.

“So here are the solar panels,” James said, his cheerful demeanor now much less genuine than it has been at the start of the day. The officers behind him stared at the array of solar panels with looks of utter apathy. “I check them for defects twice a week. I have to clean and reorient them. Takes a couple hours.”

“You do it all by yourself?” the taller officer grumbled.

“I mean, my parents help sometimes, but they’re getting old.”

“You like working the farm?”

“I love it. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

The officers looked at each other, nodding. The shorter one entered something on his hand terminal. James forced a smile.

“Do you want to see the tomatoes? Father Joseph has been experimenting with a new fertiliser, it’s having some interesting effects if you want to see-”

“That’s plenty for today, thanks.” The taller officer gave him a nod and a smile. “I’m gonna go check around the back, but my partner here can take you home if you want.”

James nodded, letting out a sigh of relief. He stepped out in front of the shorter officer and began the trek from the solar array back to his house. It felt weird to be in front when this man was technically supposed to be his police escort, but the walk back to the house contained a number of winding, almost maze-like paths, and it was easy to get lost if you hadn’t spent your whole life walking them.

He’d never been so exhausted after a day of working on the farm. This was what he did every day, and usually he just felt a little tired and hungry when he came inside at the end of the day. Now, despite the fact that he’d spent much more time standing around and talking than doing any actual manual labour, James felt worse than he’d ever felt. He collapsed onto a couch in the living room, feeling guilty that he couldn’t help prepare dinner but also feeling physically unable to move from his position. His head hurt. He was scared. They wouldn’t really take the farm, but it felt like they could, and the thought was eating at the back of his mind.

While laying on the couch, James managed to fall asleep.

He’d never really had nightmares. He’d had bad dreams every now and then when he was much younger, waking up in the middle of the night with tears in his eyes. Every time, he’d knocked on the door of one of his parents’ rooms and was invited in to sleep soundly in their arms. Now he was essentially an adult still living with his parents, and crawling into bed for cuddles would be a little weird. Besides, James hadn’t had any dreams in recent memory that made him feel like he needed that kind of support. Until that evening, of course.

It wasn’t something he could explain. The dream didn’t really feel like events that happened as much as it felt like a rush of emotion pulsing through his mind. Most of it was dread. Deep, crushing dread like he was only moments away from dying horribly, it was just around the corner, he could feel it coming but the release never came. There was something in the dream, something tangible that he couldn’t quite interpret, some bright blue glowing presence which clouded his mind. It was like confusion, but it bordered on terror through sheer incomprehensibility, like the horror of waking up and having no idea who or what or where you are. The blue presence wasn’t hostile, but something was, something behind it or within it that he couldn’t see, that the blue-ness was hiding from him. Not intentionally, though: it wasn’t hiding the horror to protect James, it simply blocked the view because it was running. So James ran too, and his exhaustion made it all the more painful.

He awoke sweating and breathing heavily, his mother Elise standing over him.

“Jimmy? Are you okay?” She rested her hand on his shoulder. James was shaking. “You were crying, did you have a bad dream?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he muttered.

“Poor thing,” she said, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Come have some soup. We didn’t want to wake you up, but I made sure to leave you a nice big bowl.” She smiled sweetly at him. James smiled back. He rubbed sleep and tears from his eyes and got up to follow Elise to the kitchen.

The soup was delicious. His parents tended to take turns cooking, but they were all excellent. Home-cooked meals were just so warm and comforting and filled with love. He was going to miss them in the years to come, and he kept telling himself he was going to learn to cook so he didn’t end up spending the latter half of his adult life eating microwaved dinners.

His head still hurt, and he was still reeling from the nightmare, but the soup made it a little better. Even so, for the first time in possibly his entire life, James was terrified of going to sleep. He actually did consider asking his parents to sleep in one of their rooms for the night, because maybe that would make it better. But he was an adult now. He was a responsible adult, and this farm was all going to be his one day, so he had to act like the adult he was. The adult he needed to be to maintain his family’s farm.

He regretted it immediately.

It was almost like screaming, horrible screams of utter suffering played on loop in his mind. There was nothing chasing him this time, but the dread was still there. He was alone, profoundly alone, and it was terrifying. Someone was crying out for help, for anyone to come find them and save them, and it couldn’t have been him because the screams weren’t coming from his mouth but he felt like he had to call out for help, so it must’ve been him. No one came to help. Something, something that had to be him but wasn’t, kept screaming in his head throughout the night.

James did not feel well-rested when he woke up in the morning. He was even more exhausted than he was when he went to sleep. He stumbled into the kitchen and turned on the coffee maker, for the first time in his life dreading his morning duties on the farm.

“You don’t look so good, kiddo.”

James practically jumped out of his skin. Father Tom stood in the doorway of the kitchen wearing his slippers and bathrobe, looking at James softly.

“I think… I’m getting sick,” James lied. “I don’t know if I can go out and work today.”

“Oh, that’s alright,” Father Tom assured him. “Just stay in and rest. I’ll help pick up the slack, don’t you worry.”

“I can’t do that,” James sighed. “I can’t just put all the work on you, I have to do something.”

“You don’t have to do anything if you’re too sick to work. The rest of the family and I will be more than happy to help out. That’s what family’s for, after all.”

“Thank you. I’m really sorry, I just really don’t feel well.”

“It’s okay. We all love you, James. If you need to take a day or two to rest so you can feel better, that’s more than okay.”

James nodded. The coffee maker clicked off, and he grabbed his mug of coffee. He held it close to his chest, feeling the almost burning heat radiating off of it. He went to the living room and sat on a couch, wrapping himself in a blanket and holding onto the hot mug. It wasn’t cold outside, but the warmth was comforting. He sipped the coffee slowly, still barely able to keep his eyes open.

And then, suddenly, the terror washed over him again. He had to run, hide, fight, something. He wanted to scream. It was too much, it was going to drown him.

James awoke to hot coffee spilling down the blanket and seeping into his shirt. He felt awful, and he knew he should get up and go put the blanket in the washing machine and change his clothes, but he couldn’t. Instead he sat on the couch under the soaking blanket and cried. He just wanted to sleep, to make the nightmares go away, and he had no idea how. He didn’t even know why he was having those nightmares in the first place. It wasn’t fair. This couldn’t be happening to him.

He finally managed to push back his tears, setting the coffee mug down on the end table and dragging the blanket behind him to the laundry room. He tossed it in the washing machine, then pulled off his shirt and threw it in with it. With eight parents wandering the house, it was only a matter of time before someone walked by and wondered why he was kneeling in front of the washing machine with no shirt on, slamming buttons as if the machine had offended him. But James didn’t care. He was so fucking tired.

The bathroom he found himself in wasn’t connected to one of his parents’ bedrooms, meaning the medicine cabinet was practically empty. Still, there was a bottle of sleep meds that he could’ve sworn had been there since he was little. James hadn’t really thought out why this plan would work-he didn’t exactly have the mental strength to do so-but he figured if he knocked himself out well enough he wouldn’t be able to dream. The bottle said not to exceed six pills in twenty-four hours, so he took five. That probably wouldn’t kill him, at least. James stumbled back into bed in his pants and without a shirt, buried his face in his pillow and let the haze of medication overtake him.

He didn’t have another nightmare, thankfully. When he woke up, he felt more rested, but his head still hurt. His stomach hurt too-five sleeping pills and a cup of coffee was probably not the best thing to consume on an empty stomach. There was no point in eating breakfast at this point, it was ten in the morning and he had better things to do. James pulled on a shirt and a pair of boots and stumbled out into the sunlight.

The bright morning sun would usually be comforting and warm, but now it was just making his headache worse. He took a moment to sit down on the porch, rubbing his temples and trying to ignore his guts churning themselves into a frenzy. He had to go do something. Working on the farm would make him feel better, it always did.

James walked out to the solar array, spending the walk trying to collect his thoughts and wishing he’d bothered to put on a hat. The nightmares had to be something more. Even if he’d managed to knock himself out good enough to stop them once, the fact that they’d repeated three times must have meant something. It scared James more than the nightmares themselves. If there was something wrong with him, if he was really losing it, then he would be mentally incapable of caring for the farm. Once his parents passed on or got too old and weak to care for it, the land would be seized and James would have to live on basic assistance under some kind of psychiatric care. And the farm he loved so dearly would become a 22-acre chunk of office buildings or parking lots or superstores. Everything he loved, everything he and his parents had spent their lives working on, it would all mean nothing.

He leaned against the solar panels for a moment, careful not to knock them out of place but supporting himself on them just enough to catch his breath. It was fine. They were just nightmares, they didn’t mean the farm was going to be taken away. James walked through the rows of solar panels, carefully checking the surfaces from cracks or blemishes. As he neared the far side of the array, he began to notice a bad smell permeating the air, like ozone and burnt plastic and smoke. This was bad. If one of the panels had an electrical malfunction, not only was it not providing power to the house, it could end up catching fire and destroying a significant part of the farm. The smoke smell was especially concerning, considering that meant something had already started to burn. James crawled on his hands and knees, trying to figure out which panel the smell was coming from. All of them appeared fine on the outside, but that didn’t mean something wasn’t wrong with the electrical work.

Eventually he conceded that he couldn’t easily find the broken panel on smell alone, and wandered off to the tool shed to grab some electrical equipment. He managed to unscrew a part of the panels’ base, looking inside at the wires leading through. He couldn’t see anything obviously wrong, but he didn’t know much about electrical systems, so he really had no idea. The frustration at the unresolved issue and the strong odour of broken machinery were starting to make his headache unbearable, so he decided to call it a day and mention the issue at dinner.

“I thought I told you to stay inside for the day if you’re sick,” Father Tom scolded him over dinner.

“I know,” James sighed. “I took a nap and I felt better so I went out to check on the solar panels. There’s something broken over there, it has to be that, but I just couldn’t find it.”

“We can go out tomorrow and I can look for it with you,” Mother Tamara offered. James nodded. He was going to need to learn about this eventually. The sooner, the better.

“There’s another officer coming to audit the place tomorrow,” Father Tom said. “No interviews or tours this time, just checking a few things to make sure we’re not growing anything illegal. You two will probably manage to avoid them just fine.”

“This has to be the last one, right?” Mother Tamara asked. “I’m getting real tired of this.”

“This has been happening since we had Jimmy,” Father Tom replied. “Believe me, twenty years is long enough that we’re all tired of it.”

“It’s not like group parentage is a new thing. You’d think it would get old after twenty years. Hell, more than that. Not like we’re the first.”

“We’re the first to entrust our only kid with eight people’s worth of land.”

“I suppose they’ve never heard of royal lineage, then?”

“That was still one king’s land, passed on to another king. They’re scared because we’re taking eight territories and passing them on as a kingdom.”

“Jimmy’s going to make a good king though, is he not?”

“It’s not so much whether or not he’ll be good as much as it is that kings are genuinely frowned upon. One person has no good reason to own this much land unless they’re up to something.”

“But it’s not exactly his decision to become king. It’s not his fault he’s got more land than anyone would know what to do with.”

“He does know. He’s going to keep it maintained and beautiful, and hopefully if and when he ever has kids of his own Earth will still have more green space on it than Mars.”

“Lot of pressure for one boy.”

“He’s not a boy anymore, Tamara.”

“Lot of pressure for one man, then.”

“I think I’m gonna go to bed now,” James interjected. The argument was making his headache worse.

“Goodnight, love,” Mother Tamara said, smiling softly. Her words were echoed by the rest of James’s family as they watched him leave.

James lay in bed again. He wondered if he should take more sleeping pills-they’d probably help keep the nightmares away, but he didn’t want to accidentally off himself. Eventually he decided to skip the pills and fall asleep normally.

This turned out to be regrettable. The screaming was worse, the sense of dread building in his chest until it seemed to burst from his ribcage. He woke up in a cold sweat once again. He’d had enough. He wasn’t going to sleep. Throwing his sweat-soaked shirt on the floor, he crawled out of bed in a huff and went to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee. None of his parents walked in to talk to him. It was the middle of the night.

James found himself pulling on his boots and walking outside, with no shirt on and coffee mug in hand. He wasn’t tired anymore, he was restless, and he had to go walk around and do something of meaning. After pacing the grounds for a fair few minutes, he found himself back behind the solar panels again, the smell of ozone and smoke permeating the air. To his surprise, it seemed to be getting stronger as he walked farther from the array and towards the edge of the property. Maybe he was just tired, but he didn’t feel tired anymore. His head hurt even worse than before, and his ears were ringing from god knows what, but he wasn’t tired. He had to find where the smell was coming from. Finishing off the last few sips of his coffee, James wandered out past the solar panels, the smell almost overwhelming at this point, until he noticed a big piece of metal sticking up out of the ground. It almost looked like a broken piece of machinery, except nothing on the farm was broken that he knew of and there wasn’t a big metal machine like that anywhere near where this object was half-buried. James approached the object. It was definitely the source of the smell.

He stood by the large metal object. It was a dark monolith of a thing, just the part sticking up out of the ground was a good few feet taller than he was. The poor visibility of nighttime made it hard to tell what it was-it was sort of bullet-shaped, tapering off at the end, and it seemed to be mostly solid. James walked around the structure, looking for a door or an opening or something other than solid metal to indicate what it was. It didn’t even really look broken, other than the part of it that crumpled slightly where it met the ground and a crack along the top. Almost as if the object had been thrown into the ground. Maybe it was a piece of machinery that had been launched quite a ways and landed here, or some kind of aircraft.

James ran his hands over the surface of the object. It was cold and metallic like he expected it to be, but the metal almost felt smoother than normal. He felt across the surface trying to find any little indentations that might indicate a door. Finally he found something-a panel in the wall of the structure separated from the rest of the metal by the tiniest gap. James gave the panel a tentative tap. To his surprise, the thing hissed open.

James screamed.

There was a man lying within the metal structure. He was oddly proportioned, his limbs were bony and far too long and his head seemed too large for his equally bony body. His eyes were half-closed, and his mouth hung open, and James swore he could see a blue glow coming from his eyes and mouth. The man was naked, and his body was clearly almost inhumanly thin and spindly but that wasn’t even the worst of it. James wasn’t trying to look, he tried desperately to pry his eyes away but he’d never seen anything like it, he just couldn’t. The thing between this man’s… this _creature’s_ legs might not have even read as genitalia if not for its location. Two glowing blue tendrils which wound around each other and had soft frills on the ends almost like anemones, ridges around their lengths almost like rings that grew in frequency towards the base. It wasn’t human. It couldn’t be fucking human. The long limbs, the large head, even the glowing eyes could all be explained by the man being malnourished or James being very, very sleep deprived and his eyes deceiving him. This thing couldn’t be that. Two days without sleep didn’t cause hallucinations this powerful, or this vivid. James didn’t know what he was looking at, and he stared on with awe and terror.

Maybe he was just sleep-deprived, but his mind kept telling him this thing was an alien. An alien that had crashed into his world, and he had no idea what to do about it.


	2. Chapter 2

Miller wasn’t his name.

He wasn’t even really a “he”. The creature who had fallen to Earth was never referred to as anything, because simply conjuring an image in the listener’s mind of who he was was usually enough to get the point across. But the first human on this planet to walk past him was Miller, and Miller was a “he”, and the creature had to be something.

He supposed the human male did have the closest thing on this planet to his original biology, or at least the closest thing the human Miller had been aware of. Surely the man was ignorant, as two options for sexual variation in a species seemed like not nearly enough. Or too many. Two was both needlessly complex and primitively dull at the same time. So Miller chose to draw as little from the biology of the human male as he had to in order to fool someone at a passing glance. Humans couldn’t hear thoughts as his species could, so they would be much easier to deceive. Other than the features Miller couldn’t force himself to part with-bioluminescent eyes and tongue, long bones with little fat or muscle on them, his sex organs which resembled those of human males in only their location and rough shape-Miller was almost human.

He’d never wanted to be human. He’d never wanted to come to Earth. He missed the beautiful interior of his home station-humans called it Phoebe, but he didn’t exactly have a name for it. Not one that could be expressed in speech, anyway. His home was a hole in a wall in the interior tunnels of an artificial moon orbiting Saturn, and he’d never thought it practical to have anything more. The fact that the sprawling structure he’d landed next to was a house was almost unbelievable, except for the fact that he’d heard it directly from the human who’d discovered him.

Miller had heard the boy-James-before he saw him. The boy was preoccupied, upset by a recurring dream of a screaming noise and a blue light and a sense of dread. The screaming noise at least was familiar. Miller flipped off the distress beacon in his escape pod. If anyone was going to come rescue him, they would have done so already, and there was no need to torture this human any more.

It still disappointed Miller greatly that no one was coming to save him. Sure, he hadn’t exactly been able to serve his purpose as security on any of the scientific excursions considering they had yet to encounter a hostile life form, but he’d hoped his company had at least been appreciated. He’d hoped that when the scientific council finally decided to send a manned mission to Earth, he’d be selected as security. Maybe then he’d have done something besides sit around and occasionally break up fights between the crew members. Even if he wasn’t exactly the most liked member of the security force, he was a good shot and had a commanding enough air about him to keep a crew in line.

The Earth orbit mission was far from his first. He had worked in security for more than a full revolution around the sun at this point: a Kronian year, almost thirty Earth years. Not like his species measured time in Kronian years-no one lived longer than five or six, so Phoebean years-the time it took his station to orbit Saturn-were more practical. Miller was thirty-three in Phoebean years, but in Earth years he’d be in his fifties. It didn’t make him feel old. Humans didn’t live as long, whether that was down to biology or technology or both. Miller still had a whole life ahead of him, which made it all the more upsetting that he’d been left to die on Earth. There would probably be missions landing on Earth before he even had the chance to retire. Maybe they’d find his craft then.

When Miller had first joined the security force, it had felt exciting. Exploring the solar system had seemed like quite an adventure. The contract with the science team had been lucky too-Miller hadn’t gone to an upper-level school or pursued any sort of scientific study, which would’ve almost certainly put him off the table for any opportunity for system-wise exploration. Now he was going to be able to fly in a ship, see the stars and planets, find out just what exactly was out there. Why his ancestors had come to this system in the first place.

Turns out space was a whole lot of nothing. Most of it was vacuum. So much vacuum that it took days, even weeks to get anywhere. Then they locked into planetary orbit (or lunar orbit, if the mission administrator was especially boring) and spent even more days and weeks recording atmospheric data, weather patterns, air composition, all the least exciting things about space. And most of the things being studied weren’t even planets. They were rocks sucked into planetary orbit. The same kinds of rocks that had been studied with remotely piloted probes from across the galaxy in order to design Phoebe to be convincingly like them. Nothing they discovered on their missions was any more exciting than the stuff discovered by the robo-pilots of previous generations. The only way Phoebe differed from them was that it was made of a slightly darker material than most asteroids, but not darker enough to be especially interesting, and the fact that it was inhabited by an alien race, which was virtually undetectable from outside. This was a strong indication to Miller that someone should land on one of these rocks and take a look around. But the science teams didn’t think so. Actually landing on anything was too big of a step, the technology just wasn’t there yet (even though they knew how to make ships atmosphere-safe and landable), it would be too difficult.

Orbits were safe. That’s why the science ships only did orbits. Landing involved dealing with needing portable air tanks, rough terrain, exposure to toxic atmosphere or soil, hostile life forms. Those things just weren’t manageable.

Ironically, neither were rogue asteroids.

The asteroid that hit the ship was uncharted, unrecorded, entirely unpredictable. Radar picked it up, but only after it had started careening towards the ship. The crew only got wind of it when it started setting off proximity alarms. Alarms that told the pilot “slow down or you’re going to hit this floating object,” except it was the floating object that was moving and slowing down wouldn’t stop it. The pilot believed themself to be highly skilled, and they immediately went to dodge. Miller didn’t trust their judgement-they didn’t know the asteroid’s speed or trajectory, just that it was close by, and they could just as easily be swerving into its path as out of it. Miller had protested, but both the pilot and the captain overruled him, so he had no choice but to let them steer into their own doom. He was just a bodyguard, after all, and he didn’t exactly have any better ideas. So he decided to get himself out.

The escape pod was, in hindsight, just as bad a plan as the attempted dodge. He could fly directly into the path of the asteroid just like the ship could. The only thing that made the pod any better was that it was a smaller target, so Miller supposed it was less likely to get hit. He didn’t let anyone know he was going. There were a good number of escape pods, and the others could get themselves off the ship if they thought of it. Miller had only been briefly trained in evacuation procedures, but the pods were meant for civilian use and didn’t take much skill to figure out. There was an “eject” button, a minimalistic display, and a primitive joystick control. He strapped himself into the seat and pressed the button. The pod rattled and shook as it disconnected, and he felt the sudden jolt of acceleration push him back into his seat. He wasn’t sure if the pod had proximity alarms, but nothing was going off. There was nothing on the display besides a large circle-Earth, he presumed-but that didn’t mean the asteroid wasn’t about to start screaming towards him. The triangle in the middle of the display representing his pod was pointed towards the planet, moving closer as the pod automatically accelerated in the direction it had been launched. Miller didn’t bother touching the joystick. Earth was good. He could do something on Earth. Earth had nutrients on it. Something growing. Life. Life could mean intelligent life. Intelligent life could mean a way to contact someone to rescue him.

He remembered the pilot saying something at some point about decelerating before docking at the station. He wondered if he had to do the same to land on Earth. He wondered if the pod would even make it to the planet’s surface, or if it would just burn up in the atmosphere.

Something hit him. The pod was moving differently. Had he entered Earth’s atmosphere? Was he slowing down or speeding up? Did any of it matter, or was he just about to hit an ocean and slowly die as he sucked down the last of the air in his pod? He felt himself falling asleep, and it was ridiculous. Why was he sleeping? He was about to die, and he felt like sleeping.

He awoke when the pod crashed into the ground. It hurt, and he saw the nose of the pod crush in, the metal of the nose breaking and sending a gash down the length of the pod. At the very least it was letting air in. He searched the dashboard for a button to open the pod, but he couldn’t find one. The controls blinked on and off, losing power or damaged in the crash or both. He considered sticking his fingers through the gash in the metal and trying to pry himself out, but then he heard something.

Miller was used to hearing the minds of his own species. They communicated through controlled shared thoughts, carefully selecting the parts of their minds they’d mask or reveal at any given time. It was efficient, in that it could convey a whole body of one’s knowledge or feelings on a topic in mere seconds. It also made lying incredibly difficult, since it basically required that you lie to yourself in order to fool someone else. Miller was used to hearing a few notes at a time, someone’s irritation with someone else or information about the ship he was boarding or a menu at a bar.

While Miller could hear the man’s current thoughts loud and clear, there was a lot of background noise that he wasn’t used to. He listened close to that background noise, and within that noise was a whole mind’s worth of information.

He was on Earth. On a farm owned by a family of eight parents and one child. This was abnormal among the dominant species of Earth-humans, bipedal, almost hairless creatures with similarities to his own species but possessing much more primitive biology and technology. The family consisted of three women and five men. Miller knew-heard-what these distinctions meant but didn’t understand why they were so important, just that they were. The family had a son. The son was an adult, but he still lived with his parents, which was also abnormal among humans but less so than the octuple parentage. The farm was under investigation, and Miller (not him, the man walking past his pod) was one of the people sent to investigate the farm for any suspicious activity.

The sheer amount of knowledge spilling from that man’s brain was starting to become overwhelming to Miller. The man had no idea how to compartmentalise his mind, keeping his active thoughts at the forefront and everything else completely suppressed. Humans might not have even had the ability to do this. Why would they, after all-humans communicated using speech, not thoughts. Language wasn’t just a tool for recording things which couldn’t be expressed through direct thought-labels, stories, anything that had to be heard by someone who couldn’t be there to hear it. It was the primary method of human communication. Humans knew only what they were offered by other humans, felt only their own feelings and could barely even comprehend the feelings of others. Humans lied. Humans lied so much it might have seemed reasonable to question almost everything they’d ever been told.

What a horrible way to live.

Miller laid in the pod for a few days. He had a rough idea of how long an Earth-day lasted thanks to the human Miller, and he was fairly sure he waited there for a few days. He was definitely hurt. His legs felt limp, and he barely had the energy to move considering he hadn’t eaten in those few days. His species’ bodies were incredibly efficient, converting almost all nutrients they consumed into energy. They didn’t produce waste like humans. They hardly had any fat or muscle either, considering they had no need to store very much energy and they hadn’t had to move any particularly heavy things in the extremely low gravity of their stations. A lot of energy was released as light from their eyes, mouths, and genitalia, enough light to see in almost total darkness. Miller’s glow had dimmed since he’d landed. His body’s lack of fat stores meant he starved to death much faster than a human would.

He already looked almost human. It was just a matter of camouflaging his skin tone (usually a gray-blue) and pulling in his claws, and he passed for a very odd-looking man. If he had clothes on and you couldn’t see his face. He could camouflage the shapes of his body too, but he didn’t want to. He liked his ridged spine and lanky body and glowing tentacle genitalia. He just wanted to look human enough to get out in the world and search for help.

Miller stuck his fingers through the break in the pod. The flesh of his fingers was still rough and firm like claws, shorter than usual but long enough to get a good grip on the metal plates. He tore at the break in the ship, warping the metal but not tearing it any more. His arms were sore, the starvation was clearly getting to him by now. Tears welled up in his eyes and his hands slipped off the metal. The hole was barely wide enough to stick a hand through. By the time he tore himself out of the pod, he would have already collapsed of starvation. Miller collapsed in his seat and sobbed. This was how he was going to die.

He could hear James outside the pod, his fear over his nightmares and a broken solar panel being his loudest thoughts while his whole wealth of knowledge and thoughts buzzing softly beneath. Miller figured he might get used to the noise if he had to hear it constantly for a while. Surely humans got used to the background noise in their own heads.

The boy was running his hands over the pod. It gave Miller a moment of hope. Human hands couldn’t tear apart metal, but maybe by some miracle there was a release switch on the outside that the boy would happen upon. Miller closed his eyes and hoped. All he could do was hope. He wanted to cry out to the boy for help, but he didn’t want to scare him off. So he waited and hoped.

The boy tapped the side of the pod, and a panel clicked open and slid aside. Miller’s eyes opened halfway. He was too shocked to do anything else. Or maybe he was too tired. Either way, he just sat there half-staring at James. The poor thing screamed. He knew he was seeing an alien and it terrified him. Miller felt awful. He didn’t want to scare the boy, but he didn’t know what to say to make him less afraid. In fact, he figured speaking would make it worse.

“Wh-what are you?” James asked. He was on edge, like he half suspected Miller was going to stand up and kill him right there. 

“My name’s Miller,” Miller answered. His tongue felt thick in his mouth. He wasn’t used to talking, especially not in this language.

“No, no, I don’t want your goddamn name. I mean what the hell are you?”

“I’m… not from around here.”

“Clearly not!” James exclaimed, staring at Miller’s crotch. Miller wasn’t sure if he was staring because the thing between his legs was so clearly alien or just because it was exposed. He placed a hand in front of it, something that he’d never been compelled to do. It felt weird to be ashamed of someone seeing that part of him. After all, he did quite like the way he looked.

“I didn’t mean to land here.” Miller was trying very hard not to say anything like “calm down” or “please don’t freak out,” because any of those things would definitely send the boy into a panic.

“Are you hurt?” James relaxed a little bit, looking more concerned than horrified.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“Everything hurts, kid. I’m dying. I need… I need something to eat.”

“You need something to eat.” James narrowed his eyes.

“Yeah, I really do.”

“Okay. Okay, I can work with that. How quiet can you be?”

“Uh. Quiet enough.”

“Just try not to make any noise. If my parents wake up, we’re fucked. I’m gonna take you home, I’m gonna get you something to eat and then tomorrow I’m gonna go out and fix your ship so you can go home.”

“I don’t think that’s gonna work.”

“Well, I’m trying anyway. I can’t exactly keep you.”

“Keep me? Like I’m some stray dog you found outside?”

“You have dogs where you’re from?”

Miller paused. He hadn’t realised how much he’d been talking about things an alien shouldn’t know.

“Something like that.”

“Do you need help getting out of there?” James asked, gesturing at the pod.

“Yeah,” Miller replied. As exhausted as he was, just getting himself out of the seat restraints seemed like an impossible task. James reached out to help undo the restraints, his arms extended as far as possible, trying to keep away from Miller. Miller didn’t blame him. His skin felt human, at least superficially, but the boy didn’t know just how human he was or wasn’t. Miller was an oddity, a rather disgusting one at that, and it was human nature to be afraid. Humans were primitive, instinctual creatures, and fear of the unknown was a basic survival instinct.

The walk back to the house felt like hours. Miller was limping, the higher gravity of Earth pulling him down and making his already weak muscles even more sore. After watching him struggle for a while, James finally allowed Miller to put an arm around him for support. The boy’s skin was soft and warm, and Miller tried not to think about how much he enjoyed the feeling of it.

They finally arrived at the sprawling building James called a home. Miller was shocked by the decadence of it.

“Your house is really big.”

“Hm? Yeah, well, nine people live here.”

“Guess so.”

“You’re not gonna ask who?”

“Uh.” Miller didn’t know if he should. He already knew, and it wasn’t the main thing on his mind given his aching muscles and growling stomach. But it felt weird not to ask.

“My parents,” James elaborated before Miller could ask. “Me and my eight parents.”

“That’s… interesting.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

Miller fell to his knees on the doorstep. James looked down at him sadly.

“Come on. Just a few more steps, okay? You can sit on the couch right in here.” He held out a hand, and Miller took it, long bony fingers wrapping around it. James looked a little disturbed by the fingers wrapping around his own, but he didn’t pull his hand away. He dragged Miller, half-crawling, into the house, and led him to a couch where Miller laid down. The couch was incredibly soft and made of some pleasantly-textured, almost fuzzy material. Miller almost felt himself drifting off the moment his head met the fabric.

“Wait here. I’m gonna get you something to eat,” James said.

“Thank you,” Miller muttered.

“What exactly do you… eat?”

“It’s… nothing special. Smooth and tasteless, got a lot of nutritional value, not a lot of flavour. Made from the sort of plants you can grow inside a space station, engineered to be as efficient as possible.”

“So it’s plant stuff. Okay. I was worried it was going to be something weird.”

“Weird?”

“I don’t know. Metal? I mean, I don’t want to offend you, but I haven’t exactly met an alien before.”

“I’m not offended. Whatever you have is probably fine. We’re both organic life forms.”

“Okay. Just wait there a minute, I’ll be right back.”

Miller waited, laying on the couch and slipping in and out of sleep. He was in a much more comfortable position than he’d been in while he was stuck in the pod, and laying down was already making his body ache a little less. The house was warmer than the outside, not so much warmer as to be uncomfortable but warm enough to be pleasant.

Something buzzed in another room. A machine of some kind, but Miller wasn’t close enough to James to hear his thoughts on what it might be. He figured it must’ve been normal, or the boy would’ve said something by now.

The machine beeped, and a few minutes later James walked in carrying a bowl and a spoon. He set them on the table in front of the couch, then sat on a couch opposite Miller’s.

“Oatmeal,” he said, gesturing at the bowl. “It’s basically grains in water. Doesn’t taste like much. I can find you something else if you don’t like it, but it’s the thing that sounds most like what you were talking about.”

Miller picked up the bowl and spoon. The bowl was hot to the touch. He held it in one hand and took the spoon in the other, carefully lifting a spoonful of the mushy substance to his mouth. It was hot and thick and didn’t taste like much. Really, it wasn’t too far off from what he typically ate.

“It’s good. Thank you.”

James smiled.

“I’ve never seen someone enjoy plain oatmeal so much.”

“That the weirdest thing you’ve seen today?”

“Of course not. Still interesting though.”

“I guess it is,” Miller muttered, swallowing another spoonful of oatmeal.

“I’m gonna go get something,” James said. “Just wait there, I’ll be right back.”

Miller nodded, and the boy rushed off again. He was starting to like this place. If he had to stay here, he might’ve even been able to call it home eventually. The house was big but comfortable, the food was different but not unpleasant, and the first human he’d really met seemed nice enough.

James returned with a few pieces of fabric draped over his arm.

“Clothes,” he explained. “You, uh. You wear them. Like these pants I have on right now.”

Miller raised his eyebrows. James set the pile of clothes on the table in front of him.

“They’re not used, one of my fathers bought them a few days ago and we meant to return them since they were too big. You might still be… too tall, but they’re the biggest I’ve got.”

“Thanks, but I don’t need these,” Miller said, smiling politely. “My species doesn’t really wear anything.”

James looked uncomfortable. Miller could hear the scared thoughts springing into his head again.

“Okay, but… I’d prefer it if you did, though.”

“You’re not even wearing…” _A shirt_ , Miller wanted to say, except he figured he wasn’t supposed to know that word.

“I know I’m not wearing a shirt. I guess you don’t have to either if you don’t want to. Just… please try the pants, at least?”

Miller felt James staring at his tentacles. He heard James’s mind starting to race, disturbed by the unfamiliar appendages. There was no specific fear surrounding the tentacles, just a sense of discomfort at something so odd. Miller felt bad. He supposed it was too late to try and shift his genitalia to resemble something more human, and even if it wasn’t he still wasn’t sure he’d be able to shift them that much. But he didn’t want to make James uncomfortable, so he set down his bowl and reluctantly reached for the pile of clothing.

“Underwear first,” James instructed, holding up a pair of short gray pants. “They’re clean, I swear, no one ever wore this pair.”

Miller nodded, taking the underwear and putting them on. James looked impressed by the ease with which he did so. They were surprisingly comfortable, if a little loose around his thighs, which thankfully left plenty of room for his tentacles to comfortably hang to one side. He ran his fingers over them through the fabric without really thinking about it until James’s surprise cut through his mind. He felt bad again. The sensation of cloth around his tentacles was definitely weird, but he’d have to get used to it. And keep his hands off himself, because damn, that wasn’t okay for humans or even his own species.

“Pants,” James said, still sounding a bit rattled.

“Come on, I think they’re covered enough.”

“They-they what? What are you talking about?”

“Hey, I saw you staring down there.”

“You think I’m upset about your…”

“Humans cover their genitals. Of course you’re upset. A human was walking around your house with theirs out, you’d have a right to be upset. I’m not mad.”

“That is what they are.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, that one’s really on me. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s okay. You didn’t know. It’s different where you’re from.”

Miller felt even worse. He did know, he was just stubborn.

“You don’t have to wear the pants if you don’t want to. I can leave these out for you just in case, but you don’t have to.”

“Really? I mean, it’s your house. Your planet. Kinda seems like it’s your rules.”

“No, like you said, they’re covered enough. I’m okay if you don’t want to wear anything else.”

“Thanks,” Miller said. “For everything.”

“One more thing,” James added.

Miller cocked his head to the side.

“You can’t sleep out here. My parents will find you. You should come sleep in my room.”

Miller nodded, managing to sluggishly pull himself up off the couch. James picked up the unused pile of clothes, and Miller followed him to his room.

The room was beautiful. Stars painted on the ceiling, a bed practically the size of Miller’s own bedroom, a chest of draws with intricate metal knobs, a half-open closet which appeared big enough in itself to be a whole room.

“That looks alright,” Miller said, pointing to the closet. “I can sleep in there.”

James grinned. He’d taken Miller’s comment for ignorance.

“No, no, you don’t sleep in there. Come sleep in bed with me!” He jumped onto the bed, kneeling on one side and motioning next to him.

“I thought you had to hide me.”

“My parents don’t come in here. You can sleep on the floor of the closet if you want, but the bed’s a lot more comfortable.”

Miller gave in, crawling into bed next to James. It was definitely a lot more comfortable than the floor. James pulled back the blankets and allowed Miller to lay down before pulling them up over the both of them. It was the most comfortable place Miller had ever slept.

He was unconscious within moments of James saying goodnight.


	3. Chapter 3

James woke up with his head spinning, but not in the same way he had the past few nights. He sat up, not sweating and shaking this time but bewildered nonetheless, and looked over to the other side of his bed. Another man was lying there, a man with thin blonde hair and an oversized head and ridges down his back, the top few of which were visible out from under the covers.

So it wasn’t a dream, then.

James didn’t know what he was going to do with the alien. Right now he (it?) was sleeping peacefully, almost passing for human other than his unsettlingly ridged spine. His ship was half-buried behind the solar panels, stinking of a fire that had already gone out. A pile of clothes sat on the floor at the foot of the bed, a gift for the alien thing. A gift, or an excuse for James to not have to look at the horrors between its legs. He wanted to just suspend his disbelief, to let himself accept Miller as just a slightly off man. It made him feel safer than acknowledging the thing lying next to him was alien.

The weirdest thing was, James liked Miller. He was surprisingly adept at conversation despite never having met a human in his life. The fact that he even spoke English was weird on its own, but James figured Miller’s species must’ve been studying humans for a while. It made the most sense, and it would explain why Miller was near Earth in the first place. It also explained why Miller didn’t seem to be nearly as scared of James as James was of him. After all, James figured if he’d landed on another planet and something had opened his ship and started talking to him, he’d be pretty terrified.

The thought of leaving Miller alone in his bed was terrifying, but he also didn’t know what would happen if he tried to wake him up. Miller wasn’t hostile before, and nothing about his outward appearance looked weaponised, but this was something James had absolutely no experience with. He didn’t know what the thing in his bed was capable of. He didn’t even know what its intentions were, if it had really fallen to Earth by accident or if it had some other mission James didn’t know about.

But Miller just looked so human lying there. He was lost and scared and in pain and he just needed a place to rest and someone to take care of him. He really was like a lost puppy James wanted to take home and keep hidden from his parents. A lost puppy with glowing eyes and a ridged spine and a pair of tentacles between his legs.

James put a hand on Miller’s shoulder. The alien didn’t react. His body rose and fell like he was breathing. So he needed to breathe.

“I’m gonna go out,” James whispered. “Just stay there, okay?” He wasn’t sure Miller heard him. He prayed Miller didn’t try to get up and go out himself.

After a few days of nightmares, being well-rested almost felt odd. Not unpleasant, but definitely odd. James took a deep breath of the mid-morning air, pulled on a shirt, and went to make himself breakfast. The empty bowl of oatmeal was still sitting on the coffee table, which he supposed he’d be able to explain away if any of his parents noticed. James didn’t particularly like oatmeal, but he’d been tired and it was the midnight snack that required the least effort.

James felt lighter on his feet as he put on a pot of coffee, popped a couple slices of bread into the toaster, and pulled dishes out of the cabinets. He hummed to himself, not used to waking up and not feeling tired. The coffee tasted better than he remembered.

“Good morning, kiddo,” Mother Tamara said as she walked into the kitchen, sounding a bit surprised to see him. “You’re looking better.”

“I feel better,” James agreed.

“You up for helping me check out that broken solar panel today?”

“Actually I… I went and looked at it last night. Some wires got frayed, I managed to patch it up.”

“Good work.”

“Just doing my part.”

“You’re a good kid, James. I’m glad we’ve got you running the farm.”

“I mean, I’m not going to be running it for a while.”

“That’s a nice thought, isn’t it,” Mother Tamara smiled, grabbing a cup of coffee for herself. “I hope you’re right. It’d be nice to have another few years with my boy.”

“A few years at least,” James echoed.

“I’ll drink to that.” She laughed and held up her coffee mug in toast. James lifted his in return, and they sipped their coffee happily.

James was more than ready to get back out on the farm and work after having spent the last few days only half awake. He returned to his room to put on clothes before going out, and found Miller sitting up in bed.

“You’re up,” James commented.

Miller nodded.

“Can I get you anything? Breakfast? Coffee?” Then he paused, realizing his mistake. “You don’t know what coffee is.”

“I’d try it,” Miller said, shrugging. “What is it?”

“It’s a hot drink, and it makes you less tired. It’s kind of bitter, but I like it. I can get you some if you want.”

“Sounds nice,” Miller said, nodding. “And more oatmeal, if that’s not too much trouble?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” James said, smiling. He returned to the kitchen, hoping Mother Tamara wouldn't be there to ask why he was on his second cup of coffee in half an hour. She’d moved to the living room to drink her coffee and read a book, and James relaxed. He quickly brewed a cup of coffee and heated up a bowl of oatmeal and brought them back to Miller.

“Try not to spill anything in my bed,” James said, setting the bowl and mug on the nightstand.

“I won’t,” Miller assured him. He took a sip of coffee, giving it a puzzled look before setting it down.

“You don’t like the coffee?” James asked.

“It’s interesting,” Miller replied. “Weird. Strong. I mean, I’ve never had a drink that tasted like much of anything.”

“So you just drink water?”

“Water, and water with minerals in it that still just tastes like water.”

“Where are you from, where there’s water? Outside this solar system, surely.”

“If you’re talking generations ago, yeah. If you’re talking where I live, no.”

“How do you get water, then?”

“Ice in Saturn’s rings, and on some of the other moons. Whole Kronian system’s full of water if you know where to look.”

“So you’re from Saturn?”

“Phoebe, actually. Can’t really live on Saturn, it being made of gas and having enough gravity to crush you to death and all.”

“I don’t know. I figured maybe you could survive in those kinds of conditions.”

Miller laughed. “I’m an alien. Doesn’t mean I don’t need to obey the laws of physics.”

“I guess that makes sense,” James said, nodding. He opened his dresser and pulled out a set of clothes, set them on the ground, and got halfway through pulling off his shirt before he looked back to see Miller watching him.

“Go on,” the alien said. “I don’t mind.”

“I mind,” James replied, his face turning bright red. “I don’t want you watching me get naked.”

“You weren’t wearing a shirt when you found me last night. It didn’t matter then.”

“It kind of did! If I knew I was going to find intelligent extraterrestrial life in my backyard I would’ve put a shirt on.”

“You saw me naked.”

“I wish I hadn’t.”

“Can I just close my eyes?”

“I mean, it’s not like there’s another room I can send you to. Turn around and face the wall. I swear to god if you look I’m putting you back in that spaceship.”

“Alright, boss,” Miller replied. He turned to face the wall, hunched over with his hands in his lap. James quickly undressed, keeping his eyes on Miller’s ridged spine. He nearly tripped over himself trying to pull his pants up as fast as he could. When he finished, he took a few moments to stare at Miller’s back.

“So why is your back… like that?” he asked.

“Are you done? Can I turn now?”

“Because you don’t want to stare at the wall or because you don’t want me to look at your back?”

“Nah, you can look at it if you want. I’m not the one in the room with issues.”

“I don’t have issues! Not wanting to be seen naked isn’t having issues, it’s just normal. For people, at least.”

“Well, I’m not people. Have a look. Have a feel, even.”

James walked up to Miller, standing beside the bed and gently placing a hand on his back. Miller breathed heavily. James ran his hand down his spine, and the alien made a noise akin to a purr.

“Does that… feel good?” James asked nervously, tracing his fingers up and down Miller’s back. The bumps on his spine got longer and more pronounced farther down his back, starting with slightly raised lines on the back of his neck and becoming protrusions an inch wide and half an inch tall around the middle of his back, before fading back down at his lower back and disappearing just above the waistband of his underwear. Miller purred and arched his back into the touch as James ran his hand over the ridges.

“It feels nice,” Miller said. “They’re a little sensitive, so try not to press too hard, but just like that, that feels good.” His voice was deep and breathy. It occurred to James to look down towards Miller’s underwear. He could see the glow of the tentacles through the fabric, and he swore it was a little brighter than before. They weren’t bulging or straining against the fabric or anything, but James figured that didn’t really mean much. He had no idea how Miller’s species had sex. For all he knew those tentacles retracted inwards when the alien was aroused.

Still, he pulled his hand away, feeling sick at the idea that this creature tricked him into jerking it off.

“Why’d you stop?” Miller asked. He sounded hurt.

“I just wanted to feel them. I wasn’t going to sit here and touch you all day.”

“You thought I was getting off.”

“I… I didn’t think that. Not really.” James blushed. He held his hands behind his back, digging his nails into his palms. “I mean, maybe I thought you might be.”

“Why’d you think that?”

“Your voice got all breathy and weird, and you were purring or something.” He paused, blushing even harder. “And I thought I saw your… things glowing a little more.”

“And you don’t mean my eyes, do you.”

“No.”

“Look, it might just be that I hadn’t eaten in a while until last night. More energy means they glow more.”

“But it might not be that.”

“I’d know if I was getting off. It’s not that.”

“Of course you’d know. I just don’t know if you’d admit it.”

“You really think I’d do that to you?”

“I don’t know. Your species runs around naked all the time, who knows what you do when it comes to… y’know…”

“Real big jump from not wearing clothes to tricking someone into jerking you off.”

“You’re an alien, Miller. I still can’t be sure if you’re here to kill and eat me or something.”

“I’m not a monster. And y’know what? To me, you’re the alien. Maybe I should be worried about you killing and eating me.”

“What-”

“You’re afraid of me because you don’t know what I am. I’m weird and you’ve never seen anything like me before and you’re scared that I might be… bad. You’re scared I’m going to hurt you because you have no reason to believe I won’t. And I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I believe you.”

“But you don’t. You just feel bad that I’m upset.”

“I wouldn’t feel bad if I thought you were trying to hurt me.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Miller muttered. “It did feel good though.”

James rested his hand on Miller’s back, setting his fingers over the biggest of the ridges. He could hear and feel Miller’s satisfied hum. He kept his hand in place, feeling Miller’s body rise and fall as he breathed.

“I like how they feel,” James mused, tapping his fingertips softly over the ridges. “Weird, but not bad. What are they for?”

“For? They’re not for anything. They just happen on a lot of members of my species. Something to do with the way bones fuse in the lower gravity on Phoebe compared to our home planet.”

“There’s ones that don’t have ridges? How do they feel about those?”

“You mean mine? Mine are pretty severe. A lot of times we just get ridges on the back of our necks, they don’t really go all the way down too often. They’re not so rare I get weird looks in public or anything, but it’s something.”

“So you’re used to being stared at.”

“You might say that.”

“Are they uncomfortable? Like do you have trouble laying down on them or something?”

“I guess I don’t really notice. You don’t get uncomfortable sleeping on your ears, do you?”

“Yeah, I guess not.” James traced a finger down Miller’s back again. The ridges felt nice, like James could spend a while absentmindedly running a hand over them. They didn’t even look distinctly inhuman, they just made Miller look sort of twisted and misshapen. James didn’t really know why he wanted so badly to suspend his disbelief and pretend Miller could be human, it just felt better that way.

“So what do you humans have that I don’t? Even without shifting into human form it feels like you don’t have a lot on us.”

“Good news for you when you and your friends come back to enslave our planet.”

“They wouldn’t do that. They’re too goddamn stupid. I’m the first of my species to attempt a landing on Earth since we started studying the planet a few hundred years ago. They don’t want to be here. Analysing the magnetic fields of rocks is way more interesting.”

“Sounds rough,” James laughed.

“So you really have nothing?”

“I’d assume something about me is weird to your species.”

“Nah, kid. You look totally normal. Your skin’s a different colour than what mine normally is, it’s a lot softer too, but that’s it.”

“Uh. I can crack my knuckles.” James pulled his hands up and cracked his knuckles, causing Miller to recoil.

“That’s disgusting. But it’s no glowing eyes, is it.”

“No, I guess not.”

“Hey, don’t beat yourself up over it. Evolution doesn’t always deal you the best set of cards. Humanity’s just gonna have to wait another millennia or five for the real cool stuff to kick in.”

James looked at Miller, taking in his elongated body and ridged spine and glowing eyes once again. He was disgusting and inhuman, but there was something beautiful in the gentle blue glow of his eyes. His eyelashes fluttered, making his eyes appear to blink on and off like twinkling lights.

“Stay here, okay?” James said softly. He tapped Miller’s back again, and the alien looked up at him with sad, glowing eyes. “I know it sucks leaving you cooped up in here, but I don’t want anyone else to find you.”

“When are you coming back?”

“I’ll probably come back in for lunch in a few hours. I guess I’ll see you then.”

Miller looked sad, staring down at the floor, glowing eyes pulsing softly.

“Is there anything else I can get you?” James asked.

“Like what?”

“I… I don’t know.”

Miller sighed, laying back down and crossing his arms. 

“I’m gonna go back to sleep,” Miller grumbled.

“Okay,” James said, smiling sweetly. Miller gave a small smile in response. It was a genuine smile, warm and friendly in a way that didn’t feel forced, like Miller wasn’t just mimicking his expression. It made James think Miller’s species smiled too, and that was a comforting thought. Maybe that wouldn’t be the weirdest coincidence, but it was nice to think about.

Working on the farm seemed like an afterthought. It was hard to care about tomatoes and fertiliser levels and soil pH and the like when there was a being from another world sleeping in his bedroom. James kneeled in the tomato patch, staring vacantly at one of the plants and letting mud soak into his jeans. All he could think about was Miller. Miller and his beautiful, inhuman body. The inhabitants of Miller’s home moon and whether they would come looking for him. The crashed ship behind the solar panels.

Shit. That might end up being a problem.

For the third time in what couldn’t have been more than twenty-four hours, James walked out to the solar array, rushing through to the crashed ship behind it. He realized it would be a little weird if one of his parents found him back there, but maybe he could just use the excuse that he was checking on the repaired wiring.

The ship was in poor shape. It was made of metal, dark silvery-gray metal that seemed to shine less than it should have. The end sticking into the ground was crumpled-James supposed it was the nose, although the craft wasn’t really shaped like a spaceship with a nose and a tail. It was egg-shaped, and it didn’t really have a thruster system that James could see. He supposed that could’ve fallen off while the ship was falling through the atmosphere, but other than a crushed nose and a crack across the top, the ship was smooth. James found himself considering that the ship could just be propelled by magic, but that was ridiculous.

It had to be ridiculous. Miller still obeyed the laws of physics. He couldn’t just do magic.

James found himself becoming a little more scared of Miller.

Eventually someone other than him was going to end up behind the solar panels. He had to hide the ship somehow, before someone else found it. It was obviously too big to lift. It was broken enough that taking it apart probably wouldn’t make much difference. That ship didn’t look like it would still function, much less make it into space. Maybe Miller knew how to fix it, but he definitely wasn’t letting Miller out during the day.

James looked around the body of the ship for any way he could take it apart. It seemed to be made of one solid chunk of metal, the only visible separations being around the open door and the tear running across the top. There was no way he was going to be able to pry it apart with just the tools he could find on the farm.

Instead, he went and got a shovel.

The ship was already partially buried, but it still took James quite a long time to dig a hole big enough to cover it. By the time he finished he’d sweated through his shirt, his jeans thoroughly muddied and dirt scattered around behind the solar array. The hole was wider than it needed to be as he’d had to dig around the ship and then underneath it to force it to fall deeper into the ground. He’d torn up the grass, and there was a large patch of dirt covering the shuttle. He tried to spread some grass over it, but it was pretty conspicuous. It would have to do. At least it was less obvious than the spaceship sticking up out of the ground. 

James collapsed onto the ground, shovel in hand. He was exhausted, not just from the exertion of digging the hole but from the stress of having Miller around. Sooner or later, someone was going to see something. It was inevitable, and it terrified James. Would they hurt him? Would they send him to some secret government compound to be experimented on like a bad sci-fi movie? Or would someone else seeing him be enough to freak Miller out and make him start hurting people? Of course James cared about his family. He still had no idea what Miller was really capable of, and having what could be a ticking time bomb sleeping in his bed was certainly terrifying. But he also didn’t want any harm to come to Miller. The alien hadn’t done anything wrong, at least not yet, and he seemed kind and harmless enough. No matter what he was, surely he didn’t deserve to be imprisoned and tortured by some secret government agency.

James was starting to get worried about Miller. It was getting late in the afternoon anyway, so James went back inside to make himself a late lunch and check on his alien. He walked into his room holding a sandwich and found Miller lying in bed, his eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling.

Miller sat up when he heard James walk in.

“That’s your… your lunch,” he remarked, glancing at the sandwich in James’s hand.

“Yeah,” James replied. “Bit of a late lunch, actually. I had to spend all morning burying your ship.”

“Why’d you do that?” Miller asked, looking up at James sadly.

“It’s kind of in a place where people might see it. I left everything intact, at least the parts that were intact after you landed.”

“That’s fine, I guess. Not like it was ever getting off the planet in that state.”

“Yeah. I would’ve taken it apart and put it in storage or something, but I couldn’t actually find any parts that were screwed together. Like it was all one piece.”

“Most of it is. Highly malleable metal. Moulds into that shape and sticks that way after it’s baked.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah, it’s a little weird.”

“But it’s not like… magic, is it?”

“Magic?”

“Like… how does it fly? I couldn’t see any thrusters or engines on it or anything, so how does it get around?”

“There’s mini-thrusters that retract into the body of the ship during landing. It’s just an escape pod for a bigger ship, it doesn’t need to get very far. Why, did you actually think it was propelled by magic?”

“I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what the fuck you are, whether you landed here by accident or whether you came here to kill my entire family. Your species has glowing body parts and metal that you can bend into spacecrafts. Why not use magic too?”

“I told you. Still have to obey the laws of physics.”

“But that doesn’t mean anything! What if my laws of physics are different from your laws of physics?”

“I’m not magic. And if I was, I wouldn’t use it to hurt you. Just trust me.”

“Okay.” James shook his head. He leaned into the foot of the bed, too tired to stand but not wanting to get the mud from his jeans all over the sheets. He ate the last few bites of his sandwich in silence trying his best not to get crumbs all over. He wanted to take off his pants and crawl into bed, but he felt uncomfortable undressing in front of Miller again.

“Can you… turn around again?” he asked.

“Why? What now?” Miller retorted, sounding more than a bit upset.

“I wanna take these jeans off. They’re all muddy.”

“But you’re wearing something under them, right?”

“I guess, but I still don’t want you to see me in my underwear.” James pulled a clean pair of pants out of his dresser.

“Why not? Not like I’m gonna see something glowing, am I?”

“No, I guess you’re not. But it’s still weird for me.”

“Alright. Go ahead, I’ll turn around,” Miller sighed, turning to face the wall again. James hurriedly pulled off his mud-caked jeans and put on the pair of sweatpants in his hands. When he finished, he jumped into the bed and lied down, worrying for a second that he’d startled Miller, but the alien didn’t seem fazed.

“Thanks for covering my ship,” Miller whispered, looking down at James.

“No problem. It needed to be done anyway.”

“I guess so.”

“So you really don’t think you could’ve gotten off the planet with that thing?”

“It’s an escape pod designed to launch you onto the nearest rock when your ship blows up. It’s a real short term solution. Honestly, I think all those things are really good for is making sure you die a slow death of asphyxiation or starvation instead of a quick fiery one.”

“Good thing you made it here.”

“Yeah, I’d say.”

“Do you miss home?”

Miller stared up at the ceiling, the glow in his eyes pulsing softly.

“Of course I miss home. I’m stuck in here trying to avoid a planet full of aliens and not doing much of anything else. Either the ship I ejected from went home without me and assumed I landed on this planet to die or it got hit by an asteroid and everyone who knew me thinks I died with it. Whatever they think happened, no one’s coming to save me. The vessel I came on is broken, and even if it wasn’t it still wouldn’t have enough fuel or thrust power to get me home. I’m never going to see anyone or anything I care about ever again. So of course I fucking miss it.”

“Jesus. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, kid. You’re doing the best you can.”

James moved closer to Miller and put his arms around him.

“Why are you doing that?” Miller asked halfheartedly.

“I’m hugging you,” James explained. “I’m holding onto you to try and make you feel better.” He shrunk away upon seeing Miller’s bemused expression. “It sounds dumb when I explain it, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. You can keep it up.”

James hugged Miller again, tighter this time. Miller hugged him back, wrapping his long bony arms around James. It felt weird, but not unpleasant. Like a lot of things about Miller.

“I know this isn’t really making anything better, but-”

“No,” Miller interjected. “This… this helps. It doesn’t fix anything, but it helps.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“How long does this last? How long do we hug?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone really knows.”

“I think that’s good. No reason not to make it go on longer.”

“Yeah.” James smiled, resting his head on Miller’s chest. Miller rubbed his back, and James wondered if it weirded Miller out that he didn’t have any ridges. He could practically feel Miller’s individual ribs through his chest, and it made his body seem fragile. For all James knew, Miller’s bones could be stronger than steel, but in that moment he felt like he was going to break a rib if he laid on Miller’s chest for too long.

“Am I hurting you?” James asked, lifting his head.

“What?” Miller asked, sounding confused and upset, pushing his hands gently against James’s back in an apparent effort to keep him close.

“It felt like I was hurting you when I was laying on your chest like that.”

“Oh. I guess it might’ve been a little uncomfortable. Still felt nice though.”

It felt weird to make a comment about how worried he was about Miller’s fragile-looking figure and the way his skin clung to his bones. He could be a perfectly healthy alien, even if he looked sickly and frail for a human.

It was still mid-afternoon, but James felt like sleeping. He felt himself drift off, curled up next to Miller, long bony fingers tracing gentle lines over his back. The gentle purr of Miller’s breath lulled him to sleep, and it didn’t matter that the body next to his was alien, it was just a warm and comforting presence. James had what felt like the best nap of his life.


	4. Chapter 4

Someone was knocking on the door. Miller could hear them-one of James’s mothers, wondering why he was asleep at this hour.

“Jimmy? Jimmy, it’s dinner time, are you up?”

Miller put his hand on James’s shoulder and shook him gently. He would’ve said something, but he didn’t want James’s mother to hear him. The boy was still sound asleep, and Miller shook him a little harder. He worried for a second that he was hurting James, loosening his already not very tight grip on his shoulder.

James finally stirred, blinking sleepily at Miller as he sat up. He was about to say something, but Miller quickly clapped a hand over his mouth. James looked scared, but then his mother knocked on the door again.

“Shit,” he whispered, muffled by Miller’s hand. “Hide.”

“Where?” Miller whispered back, extremely conscious of how loud he was.

“Uh…” James muttered, rubbing his eyes. He didn’t know what to do, he was too tired to figure out something to do. He was scared his parents were going to discover Miller, and Miller was scared too.

“Under the bed?” Miller hissed. The knocking got louder.

“Yeah, maybe.” James was skeptical, but both of them were getting more anxious by the second and it was better than nothing. Miller carefully stepped out of bed and laid on the floor, sliding under the bed. The floor was cold against his skin, and there was dust in his eyes, and if he moved his head an inch up he’d hit it on the bed frame, but he kept himself still and quiet as James got up and answered the door. If he moved, if he coughed, if he made any noise at all, someone was going to find him, and he didn’t know what that would mean for him.

James’s mother was there to tell him it was dinner time, and to lightly scold him for taking a nap at four in the afternoon. She wasn’t really mad. James followed his mother out of the room, shutting the door behind him. The talk of dinner made Miller realize how hungry he was. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and he could already see the light in his eyes dimming as it shone on the underside of the mattress. That was worrying, considering its potential to give away his hiding place. His eyes and mouth could be hidden if he closed them, but the glow of his tentacles was still slightly visible through the fabric of his underwear. And that was a problem on its own, on top of giving away his location it was certainly making James uncomfortable.

Once James and his mother were safely out of the room, Miller slithered back out from under the bed. His eyes stung from the dust. The glow between his legs was less noticeable when he wasn’t in the dark, but once he started thinking about it he couldn’t not see it. James had left the clothes Miller had rejected in a corner of his room, and Miller decided it might be time to concede to some pants.

The pants were certainly less comfortable than the underwear. The fabric wasn’t nearly as soft, and Miller’s height started to become a problem as they didn’t even reach down to his ankles. Having fabric all over his legs in the first place was strange and unfamiliar, but the pants were much more obviously ill-fitting than the underwear. He stuffed his tentacles into the most comfortable position possible, which still left them feeling constricted, but at least the glow was no longer visible. It would take some getting used to, but it had to happen. He sat on the bed, running his hands over his newly clothed legs, trying to accept the odd sensation.

James returned a while later, carrying a plate of something. Something more colourful than the oatmeal, and with a stronger smell. He set the plate on the nightstand and turned to look at Miller.

“You put on pants,” James remarked.

“Yeah, I guess I did,” Miller replied.

“So?”

“I don’t like them. They’re short on me.”

“Why are you wearing them if you don’t like them?”

“I was… glowing. I am glowing. I was worried you could see it, or someone else could see it from under the bed or something.”

“You don’t need to wear them if you don’t want to,” James assured him. Miller caught him glancing down at his crotch, relieved to not be able to see anything unusual. He wanted Miller to keep the pants on, so Miller did.

“Did you bring food?” Miller asked.

“Yeah, actually,” James replied, gesturing at the plate on the nightstand. “It’s spaghetti. It’s… uh… something different. Try it.”

Miller took the fork and tried seemingly in vain to get a bite of the stuff, feeling like an idiot as he watched the long strands falling off his fork. Apparently they were noodles, he could hear James growing annoyed at how much trouble he was having getting the noodles onto his fork. Eventually James gave up watching him struggle and took the fork from his hands, twirling it around and tangling the noodles amongst the prongs of the fork. He lifted the fork before handing it back to Miller, his hand shifting awkwardly as he did so. He blushed, and Miller could barely hear through the rush of embarrassment that he’d briefly meant to lift the fork to Miller’s mouth and feed him like a child. Miller didn’t quite know how to feel about that.

The spaghetti definitely tasted differently from the oatmeal. It wasn’t one homogenous texture, rather it was a combination of that of the noodles and that of the sauce. The sauce also had a lot more flavours than anything Miller had ever tasted. It overwhelmed his senses and churned his stomach a little, but once he got used to the assault on his senses it wasn’t bad. James was watching him intently, eager to hear what he thought. Miller had forgotten briefly that he needed to state that out loud.

“It’s good,” he said. “Different, but good.”

James smiled.

“What are these things on the top?” Miller asked.

“Uh… those are meatballs,” James explained. He was getting nervous. “Meat… it comes from animals. You don’t eat meat, do you.”

“Not a lot of other sentient life where I come from,” Miller said nonchalantly, stabbing a meatball with his fork. He tentatively took a bite, and it tasted good. James still looked upset.

“I bet you probably think humans are killers now.”

Miller could glean enough information from James to realize it wasn’t really like that. Yes, animals were sentient life, but not nearly on the level of consciousness humans possessed. And hey, apparently they tasted pretty good.

“I mean, if you’re worried about someone killing and eating you-”

“Nah, I got it,” Miller said, looking James in the eyes and smiling softly. “I’m more like you than like an animal.”

“Exactly. I mean, your species built functioning spacecrafts. Hard to justify killing and eating something like that.”

“I feel the same about you,” Miller replied. James blinked, clearly upset at even the brief consideration that aliens could have come to his planet to slaughter and eat humanity. Probably best not to have brought that up.

Miller finished his spaghetti in silence, and James took the plate from him to return to the kitchen. When he returned, he stood at the foot of the bed with his arms crossed.

“I’m having trouble deciding something,” he mused.

“What’s that?” Miller asked.

James went red again. “I usually sleep without a shirt on, but if I’m going to sleep next to you… I can’t just make you turn away from me all night, can I?”

“Sleep in a shirt then,” Miller told him.

“It’s too hot,” James complained. “And speaking of which, you might want to take those pants off again. The blankets will cover whatever glow it was you wanted to cover, but you’re going to be uncomfortable if you sleep in them.”

“Alright,” Miller sighed, pulling off his pants and throwing them back onto the floor. “Your turn now, I guess.”

James tensed up, nervous about Miller seeing him.

“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” Miller reminded him. “I can turn around while you take it off, if that’ll help.”

“No, it’s fine,” James grumbled, pulling the shirt over his head. He followed by removing his pants as well, which left both him and Miller in their underwear. James flopped into bed next to Miller, rubbing his eyes. He was tired, but it was too early to sleep. Miller rolled over to face him, still keeping his distance so James wouldn’t be uncomfortable. He looked at James’s body of course, he couldn’t help it at that point. James was more rounded in comparison to Miller’s sharp bony angles. The shape of his body was inviting, it made Miller want to be close to him even though he knew he couldn’t. James was tense as all hell. He’d never even slept in the same bed as another person before, and this was not how he’d imagined it going.

“I can always sleep in the closet if you’re uncomfortable,” Miller offered.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” James replied.

“I don’t mind. Your house, your rules.”

“You’re… well, you’re not a person, but you’re like a person. It would be weird for me to make you sleep on the floor like an animal.”

“Why are you afraid of letting me see you without clothes?” Miller asked. “I think it would be weird to assume I’m attracted to you, given we’re different species.”

“It’s just that it would be weird for you to see me like that if you were human. And you’re close enough to human that it’s weird.”

“Why’s it weird? Humans see each other naked sometimes.” Miller could hear glimpses of stories from deep in James's mind, stories of two strangers going home together and friends taking things in a different direction. Maybe they weren’t friends, but maybe they were strangers. Then again, those stories tended to go to a place James seemed to definitely not be comfortable with.

“But I don’t want you to.” James pulled a blanket over himself. “I don’t know what you want out of me.”

“Nothing,” Miller replied. “I never wanted to be here. If you have some idea of how to fix my spaceship I’d like that, but I’m not here to do whatever you think aliens want to do to humans.”

“So you’re not going to probe me.” James smiled, but the words had some horrific imagery behind it. Old images from movies and television shows and a particularly imaginative mind, filled with imagery of terrified humans and alien instruments inserted into intimate places. Miller probably should’ve been offended at the misrepresentation of aliens. Instead, he just laughed nervously.

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know what that means, do you?”

“No,” Miller lied.

“Well, I’m not explaining it to you.” James seemed more relaxed now, like he was talking and joking around with a friend. Apparently he’d finally been convinced Miller wasn’t going to hurt him. He let the blanket slide back down off his body, just enough that Miller could see his chest. His ribs weren’t nearly as visible as Miller’s, but there were two pale lines across his chest right below his nipples. Miller’s eyes focused on those lines.

“Do all humans have those?” he asked.

“Have what?”

“Those things on your chest.”

“Nipples?” James laughed. “Don’t you have those too?”

“No, no, below that. The lines.”

James looked down at himself quizzically, tracing a finger over the lines on his chest.

“Uhhh… no. No, not all humans have these.”

“So they’re like my ridges. Sort of.”

“Well… no, I don’t think it’s like that.”

James was getting nervous again, and Miller wondered if he’d said something wrong. He was avoiding making eye contact with Miller, staring down at his chest and tracing over those lines. Miller cursed himself for being so stupid. He didn’t want to make James uncomfortable, but being human (or at least close enough to human) was difficult.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, figuring he had about a fifty-fifty shot of ether making the situation better or worse.

“Nothing. It’s alright,” James muttered. He rolled over onto his back, somewhat obscuring the lines from Miller’s view.

“Are they scars?”

“Yeah.”

“Did something happen to you? You got hurt? If so, I’m sorry I brought it up, I mean, they look pretty bad-”

“No, it’s not that. They’re from a… surgery. There was something wrong with my chest, but it’s okay now. It’s fixed.”

“Oh. Okay.” Miller didn’t bother pressing further. He figured he could dig through all the noise in James’s head if he really wanted to know more, but he didn’t care all that much. It just made him want to comfort James, really-whatever had been wrong with him, clearly it was something upsetting. Miller wanted to rest a hand on his chest, gently stroke his flesh and assure him it was all okay.

“Does your species form scars?” James asked. “Or can you like… heal perfectly?”

“Nah, I’ve got scars,” Miller replied. “I told you, I’m not magic.” He brushed his hair aside, revealing a patch of discolored skin on his forehead just below his hairline.

“Jeez. What’s that from?”

“Would you believe I shot myself?” Miller grinned.

“Really?”

“Flare gun. Nothing lethal or I probably would've taken a chunk out of myself. Still, taught me a thing or two about screwin’ around on the job.”

“What is your job, exactly?”

“Security. I hitch a ride on science ships in case they run into any hostile lifeforms.”

“And you shoot them.”

“I mean, I’ve never actually run into any.”

“But if your ship… the science ship… if it had landed here, you would’ve shot me?”

“I did say it was non-lethal, right? And only if you were a hostile lifeform, which you really don’t seem to be.”

“But wouldn’t you have assumed I was hostile? I mean, you’ve never seen a human before. If you had to act fast or risk being killed, you probably would’ve shot me.”

“You really think shooting the first thing you see is a good way to establish first contact?”

“I mean, I guess not, but-”

“I’m still wondering if I should be worried about you killing me.”

“I think the whole non-hostile thing goes both ways. Keep your tentacles to yourself and I’ll keep you safe.”

“Well, I don’t exactly have control over them.”

“You don’t… what? You mean you can’t control them?”

“You have control over yours?”

“I… I guess not. I never really thought about it like that, but I mean, I guess when it’s ready to go it kinda does stuff on its own.”

“Yeah, see? I’m not any scarier than you.”

“Mine doesn’t glow. And I only have one.”

“I mean, I guess that’s fair.”

“So are you scared of me?”

“Uh…” Miller wasn’t entirely sure what to say. James probably didn’t want someone to be scared of him, but he also felt weird being the only one whose stomach was churning.

“It’s okay if you are. I’m different. That’s scary.”

“It’s a little scary. But I don’t think you’re going to hurt me.”

“That’s… nice.”

“Can I touch you?”

James’s eyes widened, and Miller felt like dying. He’d just blurted that out, staring at James’s body was getting to be too much and he had to know how it felt but he knew he sounded like a creep.

“What… what do you mean touch me?” James asked. He scooted farther away from Miller.

“Just… I don’t know. I think you’d feel… different from my own species, and I just want to know. If it helps I’ll let you touch me first.”

“I mean, that makes sense, but… god, it’s weird. It definitely wouldn’t be okay if you were a person, but I feel like since you’re an alien you need to know for normal reasons? Like it’s not creepy, it’s just science.”

“Exactly. I wouldn’t hurt you, you know I wouldn’t. I just want to know what humans are like.”

“You said I can touch you first?”

“Yeah. Go ahead.”

James moved closer and carefully reached out a hand, gliding his fingers up and down Miller’s chest.

“Your ribs are… very… prominent,” he muttered.

“That’s not from malnutrition, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not a lot of fat or muscle required for my species, so it kind of got evolved out for the most part.”

“So I guess you grew upwards instead of outwards.”

“Yeah, I guess I did.” Miller grinned. He glanced over at James, barely able to hide that he was staring. He held out one long, bony hand, and James was only a little bit disturbed. Miller pouted, looking him in the eyes longingly.

“Fine. Go ahead.” Miller was nearly shaking from excitement as he set his hand on James’s chest. James went bright red, but he wasn’t uncomfortable. Miller ran his hand up and down his chest, tracing his thumb over the scars and slowly moving up to his nipple. He rubbed it gently, and something bright and loud shot through his mind. Not a thought in words, but some kind of thought from James that finally managed to drown out everything else in his mind.

“You… like that?” Miller raised his eyebrows and pressed James’s nipple again.

“N-no. What are you doing?” James’s eyes were wide and glistening. He didn’t know if he liked what was happening, but it was a new sensation and it definitely didn’t feel bad. Miller circled his thumb around his nipple, the soft flesh pleasant to the touch. James whined softly.

“You’re sensitive there,” Miller commented.

“Are yours not sensitive?”

“They’d become active if I were ever nursing a child, but I doubt it’s anything like… this.” James’s eyes had dilated impossibly wide even in the dim lighting of the room. The powerful thoughts blaring from his mind were pleasant and fascinating noise to Miller, and he wanted desperately to make them continue. He kept touching, making James whine a little more.

“You-you should stop,” James insisted, his voice higher and less confident than before. Miller reluctantly pulled his hand away.

“Did that not feel good?” Miller said sadly.

“I… I don’t like how I felt.”

“You don’t like that I made you feel good.”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” James said. He was starting to sound nervous again, and it made Miller sad. He thought James was finally getting used to him.

“But it did feel good?”

“Yes. It felt good, I appreciate you doing that for me, but… we’re not even the same species. I’ve never had someone… do that for me before, and I kind of don’t want my first time to be with an alien.”

“That’s understandable,” Miller conceded. He was upset though, and he was even more upset now that James had explicitly turned down his advances. He wanted to make James feel good. He wanted to hear those beautiful thoughts again.

James rolled over and faced the ceiling again, folding his hands over his chest in what almost seemed like a protective gesture. Miller laid in silence with him, feeling awful as he listened to James panic internally.

Miller had touched him, he’d touched him somewhere very sensitive and it felt good, too good. He didn’t want it to stop, but there was no way this could be okay-Miller was an alien after all, they were different species, this might’ve been verging on bestiality even if Miller did look human. And Miller looked old, too, and James didn’t really want his first time to be with an older man either, whether or not that man was an alien. Of course, it didn’t have to go that far, it could stop at just that touch, but even then, was that okay? Could he just let an alien jerk him off, and as long as those tentacles stayed safely tucked away it would be fine?

Miller was finding James’s fear of his alien genitalia a little exhausting at this point. That was almost as disturbing as the confirmation that that feeling he’d heard and chased after was definitely sexual. He didn’t exactly know what he minded about that, but at least he knew the full extent of what James had felt after touching his spine ridges. Being used like that was weird, but of course James wasn’t using him, he’d asked to touch in the first place, so if anything this was his fault.

Miller felt sick, and James felt more than a little uncomfortable himself. He had to think of something else, something to take their minds off what had just happened.

“Can I see where my ship’s buried?” Miller blurted out.

“Uh… yeah,” James replied. “It’s dark enough I don’t think anyone’s going to see you.”

James crawled out of bed, not bothering to put on any more clothes than he was already wearing. Miller did the same. It was dark out, after all. Besides, there weren’t any other people for miles around this place, and whatever animals were lurking in the stretch of farmland and the woods surrounding it probably couldn’t care less whether James and Miller were clothed.

Miller stood waiting by the door as James pulled on a pair of boots. He offered Miller a pair of shoes, but Miller thought they looked uncomfortable.

“You should probably at least try them,” James insisted. “You’ll hurt your feet walking around outside. And there are some bugs out here during the summer that you probably don’t want to step on.”

“They look small,” Miller argued. “I have pretty big feet.”

“Well, I can’t do anything for you if you step on a bee or a horsefly or something. So I hope your species has a decent pain tolerance.”

“How likely is that to happen?”

“It’s never happened to me. Then again, I always wear shoes.”

Miller gave in and put on the shoes, if only to make James calm down. They were a little tight, but surprisingly not too uncomfortable. It felt a little silly to be wearing nothing but shoes and underwear, but it was warm out, and he felt pants might get uncomfortable too. Besides, any amount of clothes seemed silly considering he’d gone all his life wearing nothing.

Both of them were silent throughout their trek to the buried ship. Nothing much to say, and anything they could say would probably make the situation more uncomfortable. James walked ahead, keeping a few paces between him and Miller both because he was the one guiding him and also just because of the general discomfort in the air.

The site of the buried ship was more obvious than James had made it seem. Behind the solar panels, amongst a field of healthy green grass was a sizable area of plain dirt. Miller hoped grass grew fast. Or that James’s parents weren’t particularly observant.

“So this is the place,” James said, gesturing at the bare dirt. Miller nodded solemnly. This was it. This was the last he’d ever see of his home, and it was broken and buried in the ground. Dead as he should have been.

“This feels like a funeral,” James muttered.

“What?”

“Like a ceremony, for someone who died. Does your species bury their dead?”

“Not really. Not a whole lot of places to bury things on a station made of solid rock. Most of them get tossed into space. If you believe an old legend, they turn into stars.”

“That doesn’t sound right.”

“It’s not. But it sounds a lot better than ‘they’re just stuck floating there forever until their body disintegrates or they run into something’.”

“So there are just… bodies up there? Floating around Saturn?”

“I suppose there are.”

“Wow. That’s upsetting.”

“More upsetting than walking around on top of them?”

“I guess not. I mean, usually they’re not buried places where people would walk over them, but I suppose there’s probably some really old ones no one knew about before they built stuff on top.”

“So when you die, you just lay there and take up land space until someone stops caring and builds on top of you?”

“Yeah. That is really upsetting when you put it that way.”

“Some send off.” Miller reached down, running his fingers through the dirt. “Wonder if someone’ll build on top of this someday.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” James retorted. “This farm, all this land, my parents are giving it to me when they die. And I’m supposed to make sure it stays green and beautiful and doesn’t end up a highway or a mall or something.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yeah. Still leaves the question of what comes after me, but as long as I live, I’ll make sure nothing goes on top of your ship.”

“That’s… that’s real sweet of you,” Miller said, smiling softly. He appreciated that the last piece of his home was going to be kept safe. Even if it wasn’t doing much lying in the ground, it at least made him feel closer to the things he’d lost. He didn’t know why James would care enough to do that for him, considering he still seemed to be afraid of him, but it felt good to know he at least cared that much. Maybe it was on principle. Maybe James was just a nice person.

They made it back to the house after a few more minutes of staring at the ship’s grave site. Miller’s borrowed shoes were starting to hurt his feet, and it felt good to take them off. It also felt good to crawl into bed next to James.

“You sure you’re okay with me sleeping up here with you?” Miller asked against his better judgment. “I can still sleep in the closet, if you’re not comfortable-”

“You don’t deserve that,” James said firmly. “It’s a big bed. I’m not worried.” He was a little worried, but Miller didn’t hold that against him.

“Thank you for all this,” Miller said, smiling. “You’re a good person.”

James blushed.

“I’m just doing what should be done. You deserve to be safe and comfortable.”

“If I’m staying here forever…”

“Look, I know a little bit about radio transmission. I think I might be able to help you phone home.”

“You think you can get a radio signal through space?”

“I think I’m going to try.”

“You really wanna get rid of me.”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s just that you’re homesick, and I want to help you see the things you care about again.”

“Let me know if you need any help. God knows I’m eager to be out of your hair.” He grinned, and James smiled back.

They fell asleep a good distance apart, but not quite on opposite sides of the bed.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's tentacle time, fellas :3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Some important warnings for the rest of this fic:**
> 
> I'm gonna add a warning for dubious consent/possible noncon from here on out. Some of the things Miller does might fall into this territory and characters discuss these topics in the following chapters. I don't think it's anything super graphic but if you're sensitive to those subjects this might not be the fic for you.
> 
> There's also discussions of pregnancy in this chapter and in the following chapters, so if you're uncomfortable with that, be warned. I'm intentionally not tagging this fic as mpreg because I feel like that would imply fetish territory and I didn't intend it like that but I don't mind if you read it that way.

James awoke to something warm and slick pressing against the back of his thigh.

His mind was still clouded with sleep, so he wasn’t scared at first. He slowly rolled over, feeling whatever it was slide off him and leave a hint of a damp spot in its place. Miller was still sleeping next to him, mouth hanging open to reveal his glowing tongue. James pulled back the sheets to see what had been touching him.

That was when he screamed.

He clapped a hand over his mouth, hoping he hadn’t woken either of his parents, his breaths quick and heavy from sheer terror. As Miller lay asleep, his tentacles had somehow slipped out of his underwear and were now laying out on the bed. James shifted, and the tentacles twitched as the bed moved. He twisted himself around them, putting a hand on Miller’s shoulder and shaking him awake.

“Miller,” he hissed, hopefully not loud enough to wake his parents. “Miller, for the love of God, wake up.”

Miller blinked his eyes open, moaning softly as he lifted his head.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered.

“Your… your… _things_ , they’re out and they were touching me and they’re wet and I-I don’t like it! It’s gross and… oh God, what does that mean?”

Miller wrapped his hand around his tentacles. They wound around his fingers, twisting and writhing like snakes in his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I told you, I can’t control them.”

“Can you make them stop?”

“Well… eventually.”

“What do you mean ‘eventually’?”

“I don’t really control my mating cycle, okay? It just happens. Either I take something to stop it which I can’t do here, I wait it out which is going to be real long and real uncomfortable for me, or I take care of it the old-fashioned way.”

“How… how long is real long?”

“Days. Days of not being able to keep these things in my pants and getting more and more… hormonal.”

“You can’t just jerk off to make it stop?”

“Tried that. Rubbing and squeezing them helps keep the soreness down, but the only thing that makes it stop is the real thing.”

“How bad is it?”

“Doesn’t quite hurt, but when you’ve been feeling it for days you’ll take anything that moves to make it stop. And by ‘take’ I mean… well, if you were scared of me hurting you before…”

“So what? This is the easy way or the hard way? I let you fuck me now or you force yourself on me later?”

“Maybe. I did make it through one of these without committing a horrific act of violence one time, but that experience was enough to convince me I didn’t want to do it again.”

“I… I don’t wanna put you through that.” James put his head in his hands. “You sure there’s no other way to stop it?”

“Nothing I can do here. So if we’re gonna wait this out, you might really wanna consider consigning me to the closet because I really mean it when I say I don’t control these things.”

“You mean… you could’ve fucked me in my sleep?”

“The fact that they’re still active means I didn’t, but we’re not gonna get lucky every time.”

James rubbed his eyes. It was too early for this. Yesterday he’d been debating if it was okay to just let Miller touch him, and now it was looking like he’d have to let Miller fuck him. Better than letting it happen in his sleep or being forced into it later.

James tugged on his waistband, resigning himself to his fate.

“You sure it’ll work even though I’m human?”

“Yeah, I’d think so.” Miller’s tentacles were writhing more aggressively, possibly anticipating what was about to happen. “So you’re really letting me?”

“May as well,” Holden sighed. He pulled his underwear down to his knees, then looked at Miller to gauge his reaction.

Miller didn’t look surprised.

“This is all it is,” James clarified. “Nothing comes out or anything.”

“Okay,” Miller said. “I could’ve worked with it whether you had internal or external genitalia. In fact, I do prefer your type.”

“So this isn’t a big deal?”

“What isn’t?”

“I’m not… I’m not a _typical_ male of my species, I guess.”

“James, I’ve barely got a clue what a male even is.”

“You don’t? I thought you were-”

Miller laughed. “My species has around twenty unique sexes. So it seems kind of silly to assign different social groups based on them. I guess if you’ve only got two, it could work, but if differentiation like yours exists I feel like it might not be a great system.”

“Maybe it’s not a great system. I didn’t invent it. And how the hell does your species have twenty different sexes?”

“Lot of different things actually go into determining sex. Internal or external, how many appendages, which type of genetic material, whether you have a womb or not. And considering you can’t see some of those things from the outside, it’s kind of not something you think about until… it is.”

“So you’re not really male.”

“I’m not at all male. Why, is that… important?”

“I guess it means my sexuality will still be up in the air after this.”

Miller nodded, but James suspected he didn’t understand. It seemed like too much work to explain given what was about to happen. It sort of felt like trying to explain the difference between certain types of radiation as a nuclear bomb was going off.

“So how does this work?” James asked, feeling a little stupid. Yeah, it was his first time, but it was also probably the first time a human had ever had sex with an alien. It was understandable that he needed a little guidance.

“Well… you’d lie down and make sure you were nice and open, and then I’d let my tentacles inside of you. It might be easier if I got on top of you, but if you’re not comfortable with that we could figure something out.”

“And when they’re inside? What happens?”

“I mean… they kinda just wiggle around until they’re done. Not too complicated.”

“So they don’t pull something or do something weird while they’re inside me.”

“Uh… they secrete a substance containing my genetic material. I wouldn't worry about it being toxic considering you’ve already got some on you and you seem to be fine.”

James rubbed the back of his thigh, getting some of the slick stubstance on his fingers. It was translucent, just a little hint of blue, and it might’ve been glowing faintly, but he couldn’t really tell with the morning sun shining through the window. He focused on the spots it had touched, reaching for a burning or tingling sensation or something that would indicate it was hurting him, but it felt fine. Other than being a little gross, that is.

“Should make them go in a little easier if anything,” he said half to himself. He laid on his back, pulling his underwear all the way off and feeling suddenly more exposed. He pressed his hand over his cunt, and it came back wet. Of course he was a little excited. It was his first time. Even if it was weird, it could still be good.

Miller laid alongside him, body flush with his side, tentacles lapping at his thigh. They slid over him gently, getting their blue slick all over him. It was going to be quite the mess to clean up.

“So what do you want?” Miller asked, his voice getting more agitated as the touches from his tentacles got more firm and aggressive.

“I think you’re going to have to be on top of me. I don’t know… I’m sure there’s something else, but… god, I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“That’s okay. As long as you’re okay with it.” Miller rose to his knees, straddling his legs over James’s thighs. The tentacles writhed above his body, trying to get a hint of touch.

“Can I… feel them?” James asked, holding out a hand towards Miller’s tentacles. They stretched towards him.

“Yeah, sure. Whatever makes you feel better.”

“I’m doing this for you. Not for me.”

“You’re doing this because you think I’m going to kill you if you don’t.”

“Maybe. But that would kind of suck for you too, right? Considering as far as you know I’m your only hope of going home.”

“What a situation for first contact,” Miller said, grinning.

“I’ll make sure to include this part in my essay on aliens that gets me deemed clinically insane,” James replied sarcastically.

“I hope for the sake of both our species this doesn’t suck.”

“Fuck our species. I hope for the sake of my body. I still don’t know what the hell those things are gonna do to me.”

“Well, your sacrifice is appreciated. It’ll probably be fine, but I do appreciate it.”

James finally built up the courage to touch the writhing tendrils. They clung to his fingers, squirming and weaving around them aggressively. The frills on the ends wrapped around his fingertips. James managed to get his fingers around one tentacle and give it a tentative squeeze. He heard Miller emit a low growl. Presumably that was good.

“Can I touch yours too?”

“Uh… I don’t think it’s nearly as interesting, but go ahead.”

“Interesting for my planet.” Miller shrugged before reaching a hand down between James’s legs. He tentatively ran his finger over his folds, and James already felt his thoughts slipping away. He’d never been touched like that, and it felt so good. Soon Miller found his clit, and James felt his whole body shiver as he rubbed a finger over it.

“You’re sensitive there?” Miller asked.

“Y-yeah,” James replied. He’d only done a little bit of experimenting with that on his own time, but it was abundantly clear now that that was a very sensitive spot. He felt himself getting close to the edge already, and he hated it. He wanted to make his first time last.

Of course it would last. It was going to last until Miller finished. Maybe if James was lucky he could even cum twice.

Miller eventually got a little braver and stuck a finger inside James. James whimpered. It didn’t hurt, it was just unexpected. Miller diligently worked his finger inside of him, feeling him thoroughly. James supposed that would make sense in the context of studying a new lifeform, but that thought was almost completely drowned out by _oh fuck, that feels so good_ as Miller curled his long bony finger inside of him. Just as he felt like he was about to lose it, Miller pulled his finger out, and he had to stop himself from cursing. He told himself there’d be more to come, he had to be patient. He was still gripping Miller’s tentacles, and he realized he’d been squeezing them. Miller didn’t seem to mind.

“Ready?” Miller asked gently, sinking down so he was practically laying on top of James.

“Yeah,” James gasped. It took a lot of self control not to let himself devolve into a stream of begging. Miller nodded, and suddenly his tentacles were pushing at James’s entrance. The frills clung together, firming up so they could push inside James. They loosened again once they were inside, twitching against his walls. It almost tickled.

Even with just the tips of the tentacles inside him James was overwhelmed. Sure, he’d fingered himself before, but he wasn’t exactly overeager about it. This was a brand new sensation, stretching him open and pushing into him with a sense of urgency. He knew Miller’s tentacles got wider towards the base, and he was starting to have second thoughts. The tentacles wanted to fill him up, they wanted to get deeper inside him and they were not slowing down.

“Can we… maybe… go one at a time?” he gasped.

“Like I start with just one tentacle?”

“Yeah. Please?”

“I told you, I don’t control them,” Miller said sympathetically. His tentacles were still pushing into James. “I can maybe try and pin one aside, but they’re not really supposed to move like that.”

“No, I don’t wanna hurt you. It’s just… it’s a lot. I’ve never really done this before and it’s more than I expected.”

“You do have another hole… back there,” Miller said. “If you want one at a time, we could try one in each.”

“No. You’re not going there.” Holden shuddered at the thought of Miller taking him from behind.

“Your species does use that for sexual purposes though, correct?”

“Well, sure, you can, but-” James paused to gasp. He could feel the tentacles deep in him now, writhing around inside him. It was an odd sensation, but they were filling him in such a wonderful way. The frills danced within him, stroking over sensitive flesh as the tentacles moved back and forth. His first time wasn’t supposed to feel like this, but he had a feeling human cock had nothing on this. The way the tentacles twisted within him, pressing against his walls, curling and pushing in and out in a way nothing human ever could, the frills doing something akin to tickling but so much better, it was like a dream. This was definitely not great for his first time-nothing else would ever live up to its standard.

“You like it better this way,” Miller finished.

“God, yes, _yes_ ,” James whined, barely remembering what Miller was talking about. He forgot everything, nothing else existed as he came, muscles squeezing around Miller’s tentacles. He felt like crying out of pure bliss. He was overwhelmed in the best possible way, and it wasn’t even over.

“I’m almost there,” Miller assured him. He was fully laying on top of James now, bony frame resting firmly against James’s soft body. James wrapped his arms around Miller, pulling him close and demanding more. The tentacles quickened their pace, and sure enough, he was getting close again.

He didn’t remember finishing a second time. He didn’t remember what had happened when Miller finished himself, whether it was before or after him. He awoke sweating and panting, Miller lying next to him with his tentacles tucked back into his underwear.

“What happened?” he asked. “Did I black out?”

“I don’t think so,” Miller replied. “You were holding me and crying when I finished. Good crying, just a lot of emotions about how good everything felt.”

“Wow. That was… literally an out of body experience.”

“Worth it?”

“I’m never gonna be able to settle for human men. Or women. Or anything else. Nothing human can do that.”

“Sorry to ruin your whole species for you.”

“Still worth it. God, I’m going to be feeling that for days.”

“So you’d be willing to help if I end up going through another mating cycle while I’m here?”

“Are you kidding? I’d be honoured.”

“It wasn’t too much for you?”

“Not at all. Once I got used to it, it was just the right amount.”

“Good. Glad you’re okay.”

“God, I need a coffee.”

“Sounds reasonable. Can you get me some oatmeal while you’re up?”

“Oh, no, I’m not getting up for a while. When I do, I’ll make sure to grab you something, but… I think I need a moment.”

“Alright.”

James laid in his back staring up at the ceiling, trying to process what had just happened. The part he’d been conscious for was amazing. So amazing he’d apparently passed out. It made him wonder what had happened while he was out-he liked to imagine it involved a burst of light from Miller’s glowing organs as he finished. Maybe that was what happened-the light had knocked him out or blinded him or something.

“So can you only do that during your mating cycle?”

“Not necessarily. Why, you interested in another round?”

“Uh… maybe. Later, though.”

“Of course. Later.”

Miller threaded his fingers through James’s hair, scratching his head like a kitten. James practically purred in response. He rolled over so his body laid flush with Miller’s, and realized he was still naked. He didn’t mind. Miller’s body was warm, which wasn’t exactly surprising but was still a pleasant comfort. Maybe a part of him expected Miller’s skin to be cold and rough like a lizard’s, but he was glad it wasn’t. Laying next to Miller was comforting, partially in the sense that James was exhausted from being fucked and the affection in the aftermath was nice. He nuzzled his face against Miller’s chest, halfway to falling back asleep.

Eventually, though, he had to get out of bed. The absence of Miller’s warmth against his body was almost painful. His legs were shaking as he stood at the foot of the bed, pulling on his clothes. He didn’t know literally being weak at the knees could possibly feel this good. Just the reminder of what had happened felt amazing.

He had to lean against a kitchen counter while he waited for the coffee and oatmeal to finish. It wasn’t that anything hurt, he just felt so overwhelmed he could barely stand up. He could almost still feel the tentacles twisting inside of him, and he struggled to focus on anything else. His brain and body alike were so preoccupied he almost dropped the dishes on his way back to his room. He handed Miller his oatmeal before sitting down on the edge of the bed, gripping his coffee cup.

“Still feeling it, huh?” Miller asked.

“How’d you know?” James sighed.

“You’re walking funny. And something about your breathing, like you’re scared or excited or tired or all three at once.”

“I mean, I guess that is how I’m feeling,” James agreed. He sipped his coffee, barely noticing when it burned his tongue. “Maybe this isn’t really polite breakfast conversation, but… what exactly did you do to me?”

“Had sex with you, I presume. What else would I have done?”

“I don’t know. You said it was a… a mating cycle. Do you think I could’ve gotten pregnant?”

“You have a functioning womb.”

“Yeah, last I checked. I might be sterile but like… if I wasn’t… do you think we could’ve made some kind of hybrid baby?”

“I doubt it. Our species probably aren’t similar enough to create a hybrid. What’s more likely is my primary and secondary genetic material would’ve fused and started growing inside you.”

“Wait. You’ve got… both types?”

“Yup.”

“So that’s… one for each tentacle, right?”

“Not necessarily. Could’ve had dual genetic material with a singular appendage. Or a triple.”

Holden took a moment to thank whatever powers might’ve been that Miller didn’t have three tentacles. That might’ve started to hurt.

“But if you have both kinds… that could mean…”

“It’s possible. It’s also possible that your body isn’t capable of supporting my offspring.”

“Or that you didn’t conceive at all.”

“Well, this is actually one of the times where that’s not really a possibility. Kinda what a mating cycle is. If I happened to complete my mating sequence with a partner that has a viable womb, chances are that’s gonna result in an offspring.”

“So unless it just doesn’t work… I’m gonna have an alien baby growing inside of me.”

“Yeah.”

“You could’ve told me that before I let you fuck me.”

“Yeah, I probably could’ve. Sorry.”

“Yeah, I hope you’re fucking sorry.” The horror of the situation was starting to set in. James felt sick. He didn’t want to be pregnant at all, especially not with an alien baby. He’d finally convinced himself this wasn’t going to turn into some kind of horror movie, and now he probably had Miller’s alien offspring growing inside him. He remembered the writhing sensation again, but this time instead of intensely pleasurable it seemed gross and intrusive. He wondered how it would feel when the thing started growing inside him. The thought of any kind of pregnancy seemed terrifying and painful, but who knew what this thing would do to him? For all he knew it would end up bursting out of his stomach in a horrific and bloody show and killing him.

“Again, maybe it just won’t grow in you. I don’t exactly know how similar your biology is to mine, there’s still a chance this just won’t work.”

“Is this thing gonna kill me?” James hissed, gripping his coffee mug tightly.

“I…”

“Would you do that to me?” James felt tears in his eyes. “Would you put something inside me that was going to burst out of my stomach and kill me? Or poison me from the inside out?”

“It’s not going to burst out of you. If it happens, and we don’t know that it will, it comes out pretty much how it went in. Same way a human would.”

“But what’s it going to do to me? Is it going to be like having a parasite? Is it going to suck every bit of nutrition out of me until I starve?”

“I’d assume all babies do that.”

“Fuck you. Don’t dodge the question.”

“If it’s any help, my own species survives this process pretty much all the time. The thing’s not supposed to kill you.”

“It’s not supposed to kill an alien. You don’t know shit about what it’ll do to me.”

“We don’t even know for sure that it could grow inside you. We could be freaking out over nothing.”

“Miller, I don’t…” James choked. He was crying now, cheeks flushed bright red snot running down his face and everything. “I just don’t wanna be pregnant.”

“You’re scared.”

“Well, not exactly. It’s… it’s hard to explain, okay? I just don’t want to go through that. And it’s… it’s kind of not a thing that usually happens to males of my species, you know? It just doesn’t feel right. And I’m also scared.”

Miller nodded like he understood, but James figured he probably didn’t.

“I’m sorry I did this to you.”

“It’s okay. You didn’t have a choice.”

“I could’ve gotten through it.”

“But it would’ve hurt you. And you still might not have been able to get through it. I couldn’t do that to you.”

“Even if you’d known you could’ve gotten pregnant?”

“Yeah.” James didn’t really know if he could’ve done it. He wanted Miller to be okay, he did care about the alien, and the sex had been amazing, but now that he was facing the consequences it felt like less of a good decision. He’d managed to not have sex til his twenties and his first time was still reminiscent of that of a stupid teenager. Here he was, getting overexcited and having unprotected sex and ending up with a kid he wasn’t ready for that was probably going to ruin his life, because how the hell was he going to explain that to his parents? Whatever he did with this thing, whether he kept it or not, he’d have to tell them eventually.

“I need a moment,” James said softly. He choked down the last of his coffee, set his mug on the nightstand, and went to the bathroom.

He didn’t know what exactly he was doing in there, but it felt like where he was supposed to go. He was still crying, ugly crying, so he washed his face. Even after splashing cold water onto himself for a few minutes and drying off with a towel, tears and snot still freely flowed and dampened his face again. He was crying so hard his head hurt.

His muscles were still sore from being fucked, which had felt good at first, but started to feel uncomfortable as the thought of impending alien pregnancy sunk deeper into his mind. He pulled his pants only part of the way down, just enough to run his hand over his folds. The area was still wet, his hole leaking obscenely and practically dripping slick down his inner thighs. James wondered how much of that had gotten on him during the act and how much had dripped out since. It was glowing slightly, and there was a significant amount of it. He hadn’t anticipated that there would be so much, he must have been full of the stuff. It was a thought that would’ve been exciting and hot earlier but right now just felt gross.

He knew he should clean himself up, get some paper towels and wipe the glowing blue slick from his thighs. Instead, he found himself unable to do anything but stroke his fingers over his entrance, the flesh still sore and sensitive. He stood mesmerised in the middle of the bathroom, waistband around his thighs, gently prodding at himself. There was no clear purpose to what he was doing-maybe he was assessing the damage, or feeling the amount of alien substance coating his insides, or something else. James didn’t know. His mind wasn’t totally there, he was moving his fingers over and into himself as if on autopilot. He only really recognized what was happening when he came again, tender muscles tightening around his fingers and spilling more of the glowing blue substance down his thighs. That was when his crying resumed.

Something in the back of his mind told him he should try to be quieter, that one of his parents was going to hear him and come to see if he was okay and he was going to be covered in glowing blue liquid with no good explanation. Even if he knew that, there was no way he was going to stop crying now. He leaned against the sink, vaguely aware he was getting that glowy blue stuff on the counter and he was going to have to clean it off, quite possibly with bleach, but he didn’t care in the moment.

Someone knocked on the door. James hurriedly pulled his pants up, getting whatever was on his thighs all over them in the process. He had no idea what he was going to tell whichever parent answered the door, but he figured not answering would make things worse. He wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands, which didn’t do much to improve the state of his face, and opened the door.

Miller was standing in the doorway.

“Miller?” he gasped. “Jesus, Miller, get in here! Someone’s going to see you!” He pulled Miller into the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind him. Miller flinched when James grabbed his hand, and James realized he’d gotten the alien slick on him. Probably not super important. It had come out of him, after all.

“You should wash that off,” Miller commented.

“Or what?”

“Nothing. Just a little gross to have it all over you.”

“I’m gonna need a shower.”

“I guess that would feel nice.”

“Not with you. I need to be alone.”

“I didn’t mean with me. You’re upset. You should do something that’ll help you calm down.”

“So what’d you come in here for?”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Oh. Uh… thank you.”

“If it turns out you were… inseminated, I just want you to know I’d be willing to stay and help you take care of it. This is all my fault, anyway.”

“No. If that happens, I’m gonna figure out a way to get rid of it. You need to go home.”

“You don’t want me here?”

“No. It just wouldn’t be good if you stayed. Sneaking around hoping no one catches you while trying to care for a kid you don’t want isn’t a good way to live. I’m getting rid of it, and you’re going home.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? You’re not mad?”

“Of course not. It sounds like the best thing for both of us.”

“I can help you out with the transmitter tonight. I think if we can try and salvage parts from your ship, we’ll be able to figure something out with that.”

“Thank you.”

James smiled, tears still streaming down his face but fewer sobs choking through his words. He carefully moved closer to Miller. He wanted to hug him, which was weird, but he also didn’t want to get the blue substance all over him. Thankfully, Miller diffused the problem by wrapping his arms around James.

“You remember how to hug,” James whispered.

“Yeah. Is it helping?”

“It is,” James said softly, nuzzling his face against Miller’s chest. “It is helping.”


	6. Chapter 6

Miller was almost surprised when James came back inside at the end of the day, seeming fairly calm and collected. The fear of potential alien pregnancy was still lurking in the back of his mind, but it was easily overshadowed by a series of plans for how to construct a transmitter. That wasn’t even mentioning the plate of rice and vegetables he was proudly carrying.

“For me?” Miller asked, gesturing at the plate of food.

“Of course,” James replied, smiling. Miller took the plate from him and started eating carefully. He was more prepared for the more intense flavours this time, but it was still taking some getting used to. It was definitely more interesting than the food on his home station, but he still found himself missing that comforting blend of bland plant mush. He ate quickly, setting the plate on the nightstand and leaning back into the pillows once again.

“So how are you doing?” he asked. “Feeling better?”

James wasn’t sure how he felt. He’d gone from being terrified to excited to terrified again in the span of less than an hour, and even a whole day of mundanities around the farm probably wasn’t going to be enough to process all of that.

“I’m tired,” he replied after a few moments of thought. “I think you took a lot out of me.”

“Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I’d assume that’s part of the experience. Alien or not. Blacking out towards the end probably didn’t help either.”

“You really blacked out?”

“Yeah. Just for a second. Right before…” He didn’t have to finish the sentence. Miller figured he would’ve known the end of it even if he wasn’t psychic.

“A shame you missed it. It’s a great feeling.”

“Seems like it’d just be kind of wet and sticky.”

“No, not that. Just… the way someone _is_ at the end. Full of emotion and writhing around. You made the sweetest noises too. My species doesn’t really do that.” Miller tried to figure out how he could describe the best parts, the thoughts blooming out of someone’s mind like a firework, surrounding their entire being in bliss. It was a shame that James would never get to see something like that. It was definitely Miller’s favourite part.

James blushed.

“So am I… better than your own species?” he asked, grinning and avoiding Miller’s eyes.

“You’re certainly different. You’re very cute. And you’re… soft. Less sharp edges and bony corners. You’re comfortable to lay next to. Or on top of.”

“Yeah, but… did it feel good? For you?”

“It was nice. Warm and tight and soft, and the way you were sort of squeezing around me… it felt really good.”

“You said your own species can have…”

“Oh, of course. With or without a womb, with or without an external component. Plenty of variety. I did mention I like being… inside, rather than twisting my tentacles together with someone else’s. It feels more comforting. Like even when it’s just a brief meeting fueled by necessity from a mating cycle it feels like I can lay there and be close to them while my tentacles work inside.”

“I guess you’ve never had someone in you, then?”

“Not really. We don’t have that other hole like you have.”

“Does your species do oral? You have that hole.”

Miller tried to picture it, tentacles invading his mouth and writhing down his throat. He imagined the taste alone would be unpleasant, let alone the feeling of the things hitting the back of his throat. He’d never heard of his own species trying it, and he figured there was a good reason for that.

“I’ve never heard of it happening.”

“Would you want to?”

“I mean, you don’t exactly have…”

“Not with me in particular. Although now I’m curious about how that tongue would feel.”

“I probably wouldn’t like the taste.” Miller immediately wanted to take that back, but to his surprise James wasn’t offended.

“I don’t think anyone really does. Or at least most people don’t.”

“Then why do it?”

“It feels good, I guess.”

“Not for whoever’s mouth is in play.”

“Maybe not. But it must still be exciting to get someone off like that. You’re right there on them, you can feel every little movement.”

Miller gulped.

“If you want me to do something with you…” He wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea, but he supposed he owed James at least one favour.

“No. Not today. I think I’m gonna need some time to rest. Sleep off this morning.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, no, don’t be sorry. I meant I’m a little… out of it. Overwhelmed. Need some time to sleep off all that. Or as much of it as I can.”

“So I don’t suppose you’ve made any progress on that transmitter.”

“Well, actually,” James said, smiling. “I found some old radio parts in a shed. I think if we could fix them up, maybe combine them with parts from your ship, we can make… something.”

“Something.”

“It’s the best I’ve got, okay? I really do want to help you. I hope you get to go home. But if it doesn’t work…”

“We’ll think about what else we can do if we can’t get this to work.” Miller didn’t want to think about the very real possibility of being stranded with James forever. As lovely as it was at certain times, hiding under the bed and eating table scraps was no way to spend the rest of his life.

“So are you gonna be okay digging up your ship after we kind of… had that funeral for it?”

“Yeah. It’s just a ship, after all. It’s not gonna matter once I’m on my way home.”

“I guess you’re right.” James was still weirded out by the idea of kind of digging up a body, but he knew Miller had to get off the planet somehow. He wanted to see Miller get home safe, but he also didn’t want to have to hide an alien in his room any longer. Miller supposed that was fair enough.

The pair walked outside, James still wearing his clothes and Miller still wearing nothing but underwear and shoes. He was starting to notice the chill of the evening air against his skin, not cold enough to be uncomfortable but cool enough to be different from inside the house. He followed James in a different direction this time, walking down a dirt path to a small building amongst the fields of crops. James turned the padlock on the metal door, and it opened with a creak. The building seemed older than anything else on the property, like it hadn’t been maintained in a very long time.

The air inside was humid, and it smelled strongly of mildew and something that might have been rotting wood. Miller figured he’d be just as uncomfortable if he was wearing clothes, but he figured he’d do anything to get rid of the mugginess against his bare flesh. He stayed by the door, doing what he could to avoid the humid air of the toolshed-a strange concept, he thought, as it would seem more secure and more convenient to keep tools in the house where they wouldn’t get so mildewy.

James was searching through a pile of objects in the far corner of the shed, making horrible loud banging noises as he pushed some of them aside. It was dark in the shed, and Miller couldn’t see what was in the pile, but apparently James had enough knowledge of the shed to get by. Finally he turned to Miller, and Miller was grateful for the merciful end of the clanging noises. James held out an object in Miller’s direction, and Miller took it. It was long and heavy.

“Shovels,” James explained. “We’re gonna go dig up the ship. Hopefully the door will still be open when we dig it up, because I don’t know how to open it if it’s not.”

“It’s automatic,” Miller replied. “You press a button on the inside or a panel on the outside and it just opens.”

“But it is broken,” James said. “So we still might not be able to get into it.”

“I mean, it’s not exactly indestructible. We could always just break it open with the shovels. I’m sure both of us working together could open it along the crack that’s already there.”

“I’d still feel bad about breaking it though.”

“It’s already broken. And we’re going to need to break it anyway to get the transmitter out of it.”

“Still. That’s… that’s like, a part of your home in some way. If we end up not being able to get you off the planet, then the only thing you’ll have left of your home is gonna be a bunch of scrap metal.”

“It already is a bunch of scrap metal. It was a bunch of scrap metal before I even crashed it. It’s meant to be disposable. It doesn’t actually mean anything to me.”

“But if you knew it was the only thing you had left of your home… wouldn’t you at least miss it a little bit?”

“Maybe I would. But like I said, we probably shouldn’t think about that right now. Let’s go.”

James nodded, still not really believing Miller’s answer but also not really willing to argue. He figured he’d end up being there to comfort Miller if they failed to communicate with his home, and he was getting more and more comfortable with the idea of being a shoulder to cry on for this alien. Keeping Miller hidden for the rest of his life wouldn’t be easy, but he was reasonably confident Miller wasn’t going to hurt him. Excluding any damage he might’ve already done, of course.

It was probably good Miller was leaving Earth. As the day went on, he’d felt worse and worse about what he’d done to the human. It had been less than a day since his mating cycle started. By now, he’d probably be feeling some mild discomfort too dull to really be painful and his tentacles would be twitching in his underwear, but he’d be a long way off from forcing himself on James in a hormone-induced breakdown. And now, he could be pretty close to returning to his own species. He knew there was a science mission scheduled to arrive at the moon a few days after his mission entered Earth orbit. If they managed to contact them, he could get picked up tonight. A long-term mission like that would probably have cycle suppressants on board, and even barring that he could have at least done this with a member of his own species. Instead, he’d been a selfish prick and half-forced his offspring into someone who he wasn’t even sure could handle it. He didn’t know what would happen to James’s body once he left Earth. He could’ve killed the poor thing, and he hadn’t even realized what he was doing until he’d already doomed him. Probably better for James if he left before anything awful started happening to him and someone started looking into why.

It was a selfish thing to do, but he couldn’t bring himself to not do it.

Miller walked solemnly behind James, quietly marvelling at the way the moonlight reflected off his dark hair, the way his delicate little hands grasped the shovel, the subtle bounce in his step even in such high gravity. He was a beautiful creature. Even as a security officer, Miller had a duty as part of the science mission to preserve the beauty of everything in the solar system to the best of his ability. Compared to everything else he’d seen on scientific missions (mostly different-coloured rocks and landforms made of said different-coloured rocks), James was unimaginably beautiful. And he had been so incredibly careless with him.

“It’s not buried too deep,” James said, snapping Miller out of his melancholic trance. “We’re probably going to have to dig around it a lot to find the door since it’s too heavy to lift, but hopefully it won’t take too long.”

“Alright,” Miller agreed quietly. He followed James’s lead and started digging into the patch of raw dirt, quickly uncovering the escape pod. James may have been inclined to dig for hours looking for the door, but Miller was getting impatient. He didn’t want to be on this planet anymore. It would be irresponsible of him to remain there. He jammed the end of his shovel into the gash along the top of the pod and pushed. The metal tore open with a disgusting creaking sound. James looked up from his digging, shocked.

“I think this is open enough I can get into it,” Miller said.

“Oh. Uh… okay.”

Miller lowered himself down through the hole in the escape pod. The metal on the edges of the hole was sharp and would probably hurt when he pulled himself out, but he figured he could do it. He shifted his hands back into claws in the hopes that he could more easily tear apart the ship. It felt good to be more himself again, and he couldn’t resist shifting back into blue-gray skin along with it. He hadn’t noticed it before, but holding that shifted form for so long was really making him tense and uncomfortable. Now that he was back to normal, he could finally relax.

It was as dark in the pod as it was in the shed, but the glow from his eyes provided just enough light for him to find the control panel and rip out the transponder section. The wires that had connected it to the pod were snapped, and it had gotten some dirt on it when James buried the pod in the ground and some fell through the hole, but he figured it would still be functional.

“Find anything usable?” James asked.

“Yeah, actually,” Miller replied. He held out the transponder block, and James took it from him. “That thing’s pretty much intact. If we can just hook it up to a power source, we can probably get it up and running pretty easily.”

“Wow. That seems easier than anything I could’ve thought of.”

“See? You don’t need to worry about me staying here forever or anything.” Miller smiled to himself as he grabbed onto the metal edges of the pod and pulled himself out.

He felt James’s fear before he realized what he’d done wrong. He tried to shift back, but he was panicking so much, he couldn’t control himself.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, holding his clawed hands in front of his chest as if to shield himself. It didn’t do anything. His body was in full view of James, and James was terrified.

“That’s… that’s what you really look like. You were lying to me.”

“I figured it would help to blend in. And besides, you didn’t really think my species would look exactly like humans, did you?”

“Yeah, the two glowing cocks were a pretty big shock, so I guess I should’ve anticipated some claws too, huh?” James was upset, as much with himself as he was with Miller. The change was a shock, and he felt lied to, but he also felt stupid for thinking something so similar to humans could exist out there. 

“I’m sorry. I should’ve warned you. I just-”

“You… your finger-your _claw_ -you put it inside me. Oh my god, you fingered me with those things.” James set his shovel down and sat in the dirt, his head in his hands. “What if you’d changed back then? What if you’d changed back, and-and-”

“That wouldn’t have happened. I can control when I shift. I wasn’t going to hurt you.”

“Why should I believe you? It’s not like you can control the rest of your body. You already got your goddamn tentacles all over me in my sleep. I mean, you told me if you didn’t do something about your mating cycle you’d end up raping me. That was what you meant, right?”

“I-I didn’t _want_ to force myself on you. I’m not some violent monster, you know that, I just don’t have control of my mating cycle.”

“That’s what I’m talking about, Miller. You keep telling me that you’re not going to hurt me, but then you tell me if I don’t let you fuck me you’ll end up raping me later. I mean, what am I supposed to believe? You’re sure as hell not harmless. Am I too scared of you, or should I be more scared?”

“You don’t know how it feels to go through that. Your species doesn’t have mating cycles, not like mine does. If you knew how it felt to try and get through that without suppressants, if you knew how absolutely awful it is, you’d understand. I waited out my first mating cycle because I didn’t have anyone to help me and I was too embarrassed to get a prescription for suppressants. By the end of it, I was so _worked up_ I damn near tore myself to pieces. I had to lock myself inside because all I wanted was relief and my body was telling me I needed it, I needed to do whatever it took to get it even if that meant hurting someone. And instead I curled up on the floor and shook and sweated and screamed until it was finally over. You have no idea how awful that is, to know that if you let yourself outside you’re going to do something awful and it’s going to feel amazing because it’ll mean you don’t have to suffer anymore.”

James sat in silence. He was curled up in a ball, hugging his knees to his chest and rocking back and forth. He wasn’t crying, but he wanted to. He was terrified of Miller, more so than he’d ever been.

“I can’t do this,” he muttered. “If no one comes for you… if you stay here… your mating cycle is going to start again. Am I just supposed to be some kind of sex slave to you? Either I let you use me whenever you want or you… you make me?”

“I can try and control it,” Miller said. “You can lock me in the closet until it’s over. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“But it doesn’t matter what you want. You said so yourself, you can’t control it! Whether you like it or not… whether I want it or not… you’re going to fuck me again. And if you’ve got claws that can bend metal, I doubt a closet door is going to stop you.”

“I’m sorry,” Miller whispered.

“It’s not your fault,” James replied. “It’s what you are. But I can’t live with something like that. I can’t.”

“But… it felt good. You liked it.”

“Goddamn it, Miller, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t have a choice. Of course I’d want to do it again, I just want to do it on my own terms and not because you’ll force me if I don’t.”

“But you would want to do it. Maybe I won’t have to force you.”

“But you _might_. That scares me. I’d be living with something that’s biologically programmed to violate me.”

“I never wanted to hurt you. I mean, I wouldn’t have had sex with you if I knew you didn’t want it. I only did it because I thought you wanted it.”

“I just didn’t want to have to worry about you forcing yourself on me. And I sure as hell didn’t know I was going to have your fucking alien babies. There’s another thing you could’ve told me about a lot sooner.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

James rubbed his eyes, finally standing up. He held the transmitter in his hands and stared vacantly at the ground.

“Let’s go get this set up,” he said softly. “Let’s… let’s get you home.”

“I never wanted to hurt you, I’m sorry-”

“I know,” James snapped. “I know. But you couldn’t help it. And now you can go home, and you won’t have to worry about hurting me anymore. Grab the shovels.”

Miller picked up the shovels and followed James back down the dirt path. He still looked beautiful, and Miller’s guilt at having hurt him got even more unbearable. He knew nothing he could say would make James feel better. Everything he’d already said had just convinced James he was a violent monster, if an unwilling one at that. He couldn’t deny that he had enjoyed mating with James, he’d enjoyed the feeling of his body and the way his muscles squeezed around him and those sweet, beautiful noises he made. But he couldn’t enjoy it now. He felt like a monster, he felt disgusting and awful at having done that and having _enjoyed_ that. He had to get away from James.

“I have some batteries in the shed. That thing doesn’t need much power, does it?” James asked.

“It shouldn’t. Worth a shot, anyway.”

Miller tossed the shovels against the wall and stood in the doorway while James dug around in the shed again, looking for batteries. The humid air of the shed was making him even sicker. James pulled a few objects off a shelf-batteries, presumably-and began attaching them haphazardly to the broken wires of the transmitter.

“So that should be hooked up,” he said after a few minutes of tinkering with it. “I’m assuming you know how to get it to actually work.”

“Yeah,” Miller replied, taking the transmitter from him “Let’s go outside. If you don’t mind.”

The two of them sat together in the grass outside the shed, just a few feet apart. Miller hadn’t shifted out of his true form, and James was still staring at him. He was more in awe and less terrified by Miller’s appearance, but he was still terrified of Miller. Miller was sad it had ended up like this. He’d really liked James, and James had liked him too, at least for a while. It was probably inevitable, given his nature, and he didn’t blame James for being afraid. Maybe it would’ve gone differently if his mating cycle hadn’t started so soon after they’d met. Maybe James would’ve wanted to have sex with him anyway, without feeling like he’d been coerced or violated. Miller wished it could’ve gone that way. It was nice to imagine.

He flipped a switch on the transmitter, and the buttons lit up. Good.

“So now what?” James asked.

“I’m going to broadcast a distress signal. There are some other science ships in the area, so hopefully one of them will be able to come pick me up.”

“Distress signal. Like the one that was giving me nightmares.”

“I’m sorry,” Miller sighed. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Guess there’s a reason your species hasn’t landed here yet. Seems like we’re pretty incompatible.”

“Yeah.”

“I do kind of wish it could’ve been different.”

“Yeah. I do too.”

“It could’ve been good. The timing of it was just… unfortunate.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. It’s not your fault.”

Miller smiled at James. James smiled back, turning his gaze toward the ground.

“Can I hug you one more time before I go?” Miller asked.

James was surprised, but not scared.

“Yeah. I think that would be okay.” He moved closer to Miller, and Miller wrapped his arms around him, being especially careful of his claws.

“I’m going to miss you,” Miller whispered. “I… I liked meeting you. I’m sorry it had to go the way it did.”

“I’ll miss you too,” James replied. “I don’t hate you. I really don’t. You’re… the best you could be.”

“Thanks. That means a lot.”

_Earth mission escape pod, are you in distress?_

Miller was almost disappointed when he felt the message from the transmitter. He knew he couldn’t stay, but he wanted to be with James for a little while longer. Just a little.

He pressed the affirmative button on the transmitter with a heavy heart.

_Are you in a location where a small rescue pod could land safely?_

Miller answered in the affirmative again.

“What’s going on? James asked.

“Someone got through. There’s a ship in the vicinity that’s going to send a pod down to get me.” Miller replied.

“I can’t hear anything.”

“That’s because… I guess you just can’t hear it. Just trust me.”

“Should I leave before they get here?”

“No. I’ll let them know you’re not a problem.”

“How?”

“They’ll know. Just trust me.”

James was not inclined to trust him. Miller wished there was something better he could say.

They sat together, close together but not too close, waiting for the rescue ship to arrive. Eventually they saw a star growing larger and larger until eventually a ship was visible in the sky. It was similar to the pod Miller had arrived in, except it was a bit larger-large enough for two, at least. It landed in a stretch of grass behind the shed, thankfully avoiding any crops. Another alien stepped out, similar to Miller but with different hair and something different between their legs. James stared at them in awe.

_Don’t mind him. He’s harmless._

_We don’t have much time. Get on the ship._

Miller looked at his fellow alien, and then back at James. He had to leave. He knew he had to leave.

But once he was back on Phoebe, he could take cycle suppressants. He could keep James safe from himself there, and they wouldn’t have to be apart.

_Wait._

Miller looked James in the eyes and, despite protests from the other alien, began to speak.

“Come with me.”

James was shocked.

“I thought we were clear on this. I can’t live with you. I can’t do that.”

“But you can. I can take suppressants, you won’t have to deal with my mating cycle, we can live on Phoebe together. The food grown there has enough nutrients to sustain you as far as I’m concerned, you wouldn’t even have to work, you can just live with me. This can work. It doesn’t have to end like this.”

“I have to take care of my family’s farm. I’m sorry.”

“Please. I… I don’t want to leave without you.”

_Let’s go._

Miller wanted to cry.

“I’m going to miss you,” James offered.

_”Please.”_

“No. I can’t. I don’t want to live with you and I have things to do here.”

_Get on the ship, or I’m going back up without you._

Miller looked at James longingly and started walking slowly towards the ship, hoping with all his heart James would change his mind.  
“Goodbye, Miller,” James said firmly.

“Goodbye,” Miller choked out. “I love you.”

James was too stunned to respond. The other alien’s head swam with thoughts generally centered around _what the fuck were you doing here._ Miller felt tears running down his face.

He didn’t exactly refuse to converse with the other alien. His species didn’t really converse. He just couldn’t think of anything but James. He missed James’s beautiful face and beautiful body and beautiful voice and just everything about him. He just wanted James there. It didn’t matter how he’d gotten to Earth in the first place or what he was doing screwing around with a previously undiscovered lifeform or how stupid everything he’d done in the last few days was. He wanted James back and he couldn’t even think about anything else.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Serious noncon warning at the end of this chapter. It's brief but it's not pretty. The section is marked off like this:  
> ~~~~~  
> [text]  
> ~~~~~  
> You can skip between those lines if you want to avoid that part without missing any real important details.

James felt sick.

He must’ve taken his own temperature about five times that night. He’d taken pain meds for his headache, nausea meds for his stomachache, and sleeping pills when neither of those things helped and he was still lying awake in agony. He’d stopped trying to convince himself he’d gotten sick.

It was all Miller. James just couldn’t get Miller out of his head no matter how hard he tried, and he couldn’t even figure out how to feel about him. Miller could’ve done awful things to him, threatened to do awful things to him, sort of did do awful things to him. And yet James was inclined to forgive him for it all. He didn’t know what a mating cycle was like, of course he didn’t. He didn’t want Miller to be in pain, but he also didn’t want to be used like that, especially under threat of violence. And being used had felt _good_ , thinking of being used felt sickening and awful but in the moment, it had felt amazing. The fact that it had felt amazing made everything even worse. Miller was beautiful and ugly and he did such wonderful and awful things and James was glad he was gone but also missed him so much.

Thinking about Miller hurt his head, and thinking about what Miller had done to him hurt a lot of other parts of his body. He couldn’t get the thought of writhing tentacles out of his head, he could practically feel them inside him. It was sickening and he missed it.

The sleeping pills finally kicked in at around three in the morning and James was relieved when his eyelids finally became heavy and he passed out.

The bright sun shining through his window woke him up, and it hurt his eyes and made his headache worse. It reminded him of the days before he found Miller, when the signal from the ship gave him nightmares that deprived him of sleep and gave him a persistent headache. Miller had been hurting him since before he even arrived. Miller was making him suffer before, and now he was doing it again. James felt stupid for ever having thought he was safe sleeping next to Miller. It didn’t matter whether Miller wanted to hurt him-he always would.

James wandered sleepily into the kitchen to make himself breakfast. He was barely conscious as he pressed the buttons on the coffee maker and poured himself a bowl of cereal. The coffee burned his mouth, and he kept sipping it anyway. His lips and tongue stung as they were soaked in burning liquid, and he welcomed the sensation. It was a distraction from his headache. The coffee made the nausea worse, drinking coffee on an empty stomach tended to do that, but he didn’t mind. He’d gotten about three hours of sleep and he needed the caffeine.

Footsteps clicked loudly towards him, and James nearly groaned. He couldn’t face anyone right now. Not while he felt like this.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Mother Elise said sweetly, pouring herself a cup of coffee and sitting down with James at the table. James blinked and rubbed his eyes. He felt bad ignoring his mother, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything. He laid his head on the table, his dark hair falling into his eyes.

“You feeling sick again?” Elise asked, placing her hand on his and gently caressing him.

James nodded.

“Oh, you poor thing. Do you need to take something?”

“I tried. Didn’t help.”

“Jimmy, darling, you shouldn’t just take medication without asking.”

“I’m an adult, mom. And I feel like shit.”

Elise stared at him, seeming more sad than angry. She squeezed his hand, and James felt awful.

“Do you need to go to the doctor?”

“Yeah. I think so.” James knew the doctor would do nothing for his headache or stomachache, but there was still the issue of figuring out what Miller did to him. If he had an alien baby growing inside him, now was as good a time as any to find out. Thinking about that was making him even more nauseous, and he was admittedly scared to find out what exactly had happened to him, but it had to be done.

“Alright. I can take you later this morning if you’d like.”

“Yeah. Thank you.”

James couldn’t even finish his bowl of cereal. His stomach was starting to hurt even more in anticipation of the upcoming doctor visit. He poured the remaining contents of his bowl down the sink, limped to the bathroom, and ran himself a bath. It occurred to him that he hadn’t bathed since Miller arrived, having apparently been too preoccupied with babysitting the alien. He hadn’t taken a bath since he was a little kid, but he was just too exhausted and in pain to stand up in the shower.

James only started to shampoo his hair before giving up. He laid down in the bath with his head resting somewhat uncomfortably on the wall of the tub, shampoo running into his eyes and mixing with his tears. It was probably his eyes deceiving him, but he could’ve sworn the water was turning just a little bit blue. He felt like throwing up. That stuff was probably still all over him, inside him even, and he couldn’t stand it. He poured a bit of soap into his hand, rubbing it tentatively over his cunt. The area was sensitive and touching it felt dirty. James had never been particularly uncomfortable with that part of himself, but after what Miller had done to him, he felt bad just thinking about it. It could’ve been good, but not like this. Not with some horrific alien under threat of violence. At least it didn’t hurt. At least having a pair of tentacles shoved inside of him hadn’t caused any noticeable damage.

He spent a while in the bathtub, shampoo in his hair and tears streaming down his face, not getting any cleaner, or feeling any cleaner for that matter. He’d been resting a hand on his stomach, still thinking about the thing that could be growing inside of him. It occurred to him that if this thing wasn’t human, it might not be picked up on a pregnancy test. Even after this appointment, he might still have something inside him waiting to burst forth. James wanted to hate Miller. He wanted to hate him for threatening him into sex, for tricking him into being some kind of incubator for an alien. And yet he couldn’t accept that this was Miller’s fault. He’d imagined Miller struggling through his mating cycle, curled up in a ball and sweating and crying. Of course he’d do whatever he could to avoid that. James suspected he wouldn’t enjoy having to endure Miller when he was like that anyway.

But that wouldn’t have happened. Miller would have left, he would have taken care of his mating cycle on the ship with the other alien and James wouldn’t be laying in the tub crying and wondering if he was going to be the first ever recorded death by stomach-bursting aliens.

The sudden bang of someone knocking on the door surprised James, making him shift in the bathtub and slosh water onto the floor. He barely had the energy to be irritated by the mess.

“Jimmy? You’ve been in there for an hour, are you about ready to go?”

“Yeah. Just give me a minute.”

James climbed out of the bath, bracing himself against the wall to keep himself from falling over. His knees were shaking, and he knew his face was still flushed red with tears, but he hoped it wasn’t too noticeable. He dried himself off quickly and pulled on his jeans and t-shirt, the fabric clinging to his still-damp skin. He combed his fingers through his hair, trying to make himself look a bit less dishevelled. The dampness of his clothes only added another layer to the lovely cocktail of headache and nausea, and his whole body felt wrong.

“I’m sorry you’re not feeling well, sweetheart,” Mother Elise said, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. Elise had always babied him a bit more than his other parents, but James didn’t mind. Now more than ever, he didn’t feel like an adult able to handle himself in the world. He felt sick and scared, he felt like a little kid with no real idea of what was happening or why or why it had to feel so awful. He didn’t say anything as he walked out to the car with his mother, just hunched over with his hands in his pockets, bowing his head in the hopes that maybe she wouldn’t see his face.

He sat in the backseat of the car on the way to the doctor’s office. He didn’t want to sit next to his mother, sitting next to her might make her more inclined to try and talk to him and he just couldn’t hold a conversation right now, he knew the moment he tried to speak he’d start crying, and because he was an adult and should have been able to handle himself it would be weird for him to sob uncontrollably over a tummyache.

There was no one else waiting in the doctor’s office when they arrived. It was a small clinic in practically the middle of nowhere, the closest doctor’s office within driving distance of the farm but still half an hour’s drive out from any human habitation. James didn’t have to wait long. When the doctor brought him into the exam room, she asked if he wanted his mother there, and James said no. He watched Mother Elise sadly as she walked back out to the waiting room, feeling almost as if he’d betrayed her. She cared about him, she clearly wanted to know what was wrong with him and she wanted him to be okay, but James just couldn’t let her know about this.

“So what seems to be the problem today, James?” the doctor asked.

“I… I think I might be pregnant.”

The doctor looked confused for a moment, glancing down at her clipboard and then back at James.

“Oh. Um. Alright. Do you want to take a test?”

“Yeah. Maybe. Actually, I don’t know if it would work.”

“How long ago did you have unprotected sex?”

“Uh… yesterday.”

“Hm. You are right, it would be too early to tell with any kind of test we could do. What makes you think you might be pregnant?”

“I just…” James didn’t have a good explanation. He _knew._ He had to be, unless by some miracle the alien goo inside him had just realized he was human and didn’t make a baby. But “would you believe an alien told me” didn’t seem like the response the doctor was looking for.

“Was this your first time?”

“Yeah. Why, is that important?”

“Not for you being pregnant. But it’s natural to feel nervous about that, especially if it was unprotected.”

“Is it normal to feel sick afterwards?”

“How so?”

“I’m just… I feel sick. My stomach hurts and my head hurts and I just feel… gross.”

“You said it was unprotected. Was there a reason your partner wasn’t using protection?”

The thought of trying to fit a condom over Miller’s tentacles was almost enough to make James laugh.

“Uh… we didn’t have any.”

“You couldn’t wait?”

“Until we had some? I don’t know how my parents would feel about me going out and buying condoms.”

“Well, you are allowed to do that. You’re an adult, you’re allowed to make sure you’re having safe sex.”

“They don’t know I was having sex. They don’t know I saw someone. And if they found out, they… they would’ve been mad.”

“They don’t want you seeing other men? Or they don’t want you seeing anyone at all?”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just… this guy was… different. They wouldn’t have liked him, I don’t think.”

“How did you meet this man?”

“Uh. It’s a long story. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“James, do you mind if I ask you something a bit upsetting? You don’t have to answer if you’re not comfortable, but I think it would be helpful to know so I can help you.”

“Okay.”

“Was it consensual?”

James’s instinct was to say yes. Of course Miller hadn’t raped him. He’d let Miller use him, he’d even enjoyed it. But then there was the issue of his threats, and hiding the fact that James could get pregnant, and whatever he’d done while James was briefly unconscious.

“I don’t know,” he replied, his face in his hands.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I mean I don’t know. I didn’t hate it. I… I liked it. But I don’t know if I wanted it. And I didn’t know what was going to happen afterwards.”

“Do you need to talk to a counsellor about it?”

“No.”

“Are you going to feel safe if I send you home?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like to be tested for any sexually transmitted infections? It’s probably a good idea if you’ve had unprotected sex, especially with someone you feel might be untrustworthy.”

James thought about that for a moment. Could Miller even get STDs? Were they the same ones humans got? Could Miller have even given him one if he had one?

“Uh… no thanks,” he replied.

“Alright. Is there anything else worrying you?”

“No.”

“Okay. If you’re still having concerns in a few weeks, you can come back and we can give you a pregnancy test.”

“Thank you.” James slid off the exam table and walked towards the door. He turned back to the doctor just before he left. “You’re not going to tell my parents about this, are you?”

“No. You’re an adult, your medical information is private.”

“You don’t need to tell them you think I’m in danger?”

“If you think you’re in danger you can tell them yourself.”

“Okay. Thank you.” James gave the doctor a quick smile before walking out the door. He felt a little less sick now, presumably because he was starting to accept his situation. But that probably wouldn’t last. In a few weeks time, he’d start feeling sick again, and he’d go back to the doctor to find out what Miller really did to him.

And then he wouldn’t be able to deny it anymore.

He really didn’t want to hate Miller. Miller hadn’t meant to hurt him. But maybe Miller just didn’t mind if James got hurt. He _needed_ James, needed him because his body demanded James and Miller couldn’t say no, no matter what damage might come to James in the process. Even if he’d enjoyed it, there was no way what happened to him was good or healthy. He didn’t want to think Miller had raped him. Mostly because he didn’t want to have been raped. But he didn’t want to be pregnant. He didn’t want to be Miller’s mating toy. And Miller didn’t care about that.

Still, if being Miller’s mating toy felt like _that_ , maybe he didn’t mind.

“What did the doctor say?” Mother Elise asked him as he walked back into the waiting room.

“Uh… I’m fine,” James replied. “Just stressed.”

“Why would you be stressed?”

“I don’t know. I think I’ve just been thinking about taking over the farm, and not having you guys around anymore, and it’s just a lot. I know it’s important and I’m glad to be a part of it but it’s a lot to handle, you know?”

“Oh, darling, it’s okay,” Elise said, pulling him into a hug and gently rubbing his back. “You’re going to do amazing. We’re so lucky to have you.”

“Thanks.” James leaned in close to his mother. He felt himself crying again. Everything was terrifying. He hadn’t even thought about the farm for a while because he was so focused on the horror of everything that was happening with Miller, but now that he was thinking about it again he’d gone back to being terrified of it. He couldn’t handle it alone. He couldn’t handle anything alone. He really was just a scared little kid.

James hadn’t even realized he was crying again until he heard his mother whispering to him.

“Shh, Jimmy, baby, it’s alright. You’re gonna be okay.”

“I’m sorry,” James muttered. He figured the receptionist must be staring at him, a fully grown man weeping in his mother’s arms, but he didn’t care. He felt awful and he just needed to fucking cry.

“It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“Can we get ice cream on the way home?” James blubbered. It was stupid and childish but it was the only concrete way he could think of to make everything hurt less.

“Of course,” his mother replied.

James felt better when he got home. He even felt good enough to go out and work on the farm, kneeling in the dirt and pulling weeds as if there was nothing wrong. And in the moment, there wasn’t.

The days that followed were better. Less painful, at least. Things hadn’t gone back to normal-there was never going to be any such thing as normal, not after Miller, but it was close. He still looked at his belly in the mirror every day, knowing that realistically he wouldn’t actually be able to tell but still swearing to himself it was getting bigger. Maybe alien babies grew faster. Or maybe he was just freaking out over nothing.

And then he realized he couldn’t zip up his sweatshirt.

Well, he could, it was just a lot more difficult than it had been previously. He struggled to pull the zipper up over his belly, and the fabric clearly stretched around his midsection. James was horrified. He rushed to the bathroom, pulled up his shirt, and stared at himself in the mirror. His stomach definitely looked rounder, he couldn’t possibly be imagining it now. He tried not to freak out. Maybe the sweatshirt shrunk in the wash. Maybe he’d just been eating more, he’d been stressed after all.

But he couldn’t lie to himself anymore. Something was growing inside of him.

He couldn’t go back to the doctor, not without coming up with another explanation, and he felt bad lying to his parents. Eventually he wouldn’t be able to hide it anymore. Eventually his stomach would get distended enough that they’d start to notice. Or he’d start glowing blue in certain places. Or an alien would claw its way out of his stomach in the middle of a pleasant family dinner.

James braced himself against the sink. He felt utterly, completely sick. It made sense, he pretty much had an alien parasite leeching off his insides at that very moment. He tried to think of how many drugs it would take to kill the thing, and whether it would die before him. He wondered whether that coathanger thing actually worked or if it was just something that happened in movies. He was terrified. Miller was gone, he was millions of miles away, and now James was considering doing actual physical harm to himself because of him.

A horrible thought crossed his mind. He didn’t like it, he didn’t want to know, but he wasn’t going to be able to get it out of his mind until he figured it out. James took off his pants, climbed up onto the bathroom counter, and stared at himself.

To his relief, nothing was glowing. Everything looked pretty normal, although he figured he didn’t spend enough time looking at that part of his body to really know. He quickly climbed down from the bathroom counter and put his pants back on, horrified that the thought had even occurred to him.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t stupid. Maybe he’d check again in a few days and there’d be glowing goo dripping out of him.

He couldn’t deal with this. Seeing what had happened to his body-what Miller had done to him-in its early stages was too horrific. He couldn’t face anyone like this. James ended up taking a nap in the middle of the day, just to avoid having to think about the thing growing inside him.

This did not work as well as he thought it would.

He hadn’t had a real nightmare since before Miller arrived, and somehow he’d convinced himself that that part of Miller’s exploits was over. It was very definitely not over. He’d had nightmares, awful nightmares, but this was on a new level.

**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**

James was lying in bed. Not his own bed, not in a room he recognized as being anything close to somewhere he’d been before. He couldn’t exactly see the room, but he knew. It was dark and unpleasantly warm, making James feel like he was suffocating. He placed a hand to his chest, running it all the way down his body and finding that he was naked.

Miller walked into the room. James couldn’t see where he’d come from, he couldn’t hear a door, but he could see Miller walk in. The alien was glowing, the blue glow of his eyes and tentacles illuminating his entire body. As Miller got closer to him, James was able to see himself. His stomach was horribly distended and covered in little blue spots. He felt sick, trying to close his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore, but he couldn’t. The dream wouldn’t let him, it was going to make him look, make him see the horrible things Miller did to him.

Miller gently placed a hand against James’s inner thigh. His hands were soft, lacking the claws Miller had in his true form. It almost felt good.

“Come on,” he said, pushing softly on James’s thigh. “Don’t be scared. You know how this works.”

James didn’t know what “this” was, but he knew he didn’t want it.

Then he felt a sharp pain in his inner thigh. He looked down to see Miller’s now-clawed hands digging into his skin.

“I don’t want to hurt you, James. I love you. You know that. Please don’t make me force you.” His eyes were gentle and loving, even as he dug his claws into James’s flesh. James spread his legs, and Miller’s claws disappeared before they could draw blood.

Miller leaned in closer to him, planting a soft kiss on his clit. James yelped, not because it hurt but because the intimacy of it was too much, too fast, and it felt wrong given the context.

“Shh,” Miller whispered, stroking a finger over James’s folds. This was not calming. Another time, it would have felt nice, but not like this, definitely not like this.

Miller slipped his finger inside of James, stroking inside of him now. James writhed and twisted under him. Moving felt awkward with his belly as distended as it was, and trying to roll out of bed away from Miller’s touch would’ve just made it feel worse.

“I know, I know, you’re uncomfortable,” Miller whispered. “You must be, this far along in the incubation process.”

“How far?” James choked out.

“You’re almost there. Not quite, though. I’m just here to have a little fun with you while you wait.” He moved his other hand over James’s belly, rubbing it softly. It hurt a bit, his belly sore from the stress of having an alien growing inside it.

“This isn’t fun!” James cried.

“Shh,” Miller said again, sliding another finger into James as if that would calm him. “Just let me do this. Let me love you.”

“You wouldn’t do this if you loved me.”

“Isn’t this how your species shows love?”

“Not like this!”

“Oh, poor thing.” Miller fucked his fingers in and out of James, and James whimpered. “You’re inexperienced. This is a scary new thing for you, for your whole species. But it’s okay. Just let me.”

“You’re a monster.”

“I know, darling. I know.”

Miller pulled his fingers out and moved up so his tentacles were closer to James. The frills licked at his cunt, as if the tentacles had a mind of their own and were just begging to get inside him. Miller grabbed onto James’s legs and pushed them upwards, curling him into a ball and leaving him fully exposed to Miller.

_Oh._

“You said both at once was too much for you before, so I figured we’d try using both holes this time, hm?”

_No. No, please just take the one, it’ll suck but it’ll be better than that._

“Stop moving around like that. I told you, I don’t want to force you.”

_You’re going to have to,_ James thought, lashing out with all his limbs in an attempt to force Miller off of him. The new weight in his belly was making his whole body feel heavy, practically pinning him to the bed, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. He wasn’t going to let Miller win. He wasn’t going to let Miller use him, not again, not like this.

Something tore his thigh, and he screamed. He couldn’t see over his distended stomach, but he carefully reached down to feel the damage. Miller didn’t stop him. There were four gashes running down his inner thigh, bleeding onto the sheets. The flesh wasn’t cleanly broken as if it had been cut with a knife either-Miller’s claws were jagged and clearly not designed for cleanly ripping flesh, he could feel the sickening uneven edges of torn skin and muscle, _muscle_ , god those things went deep.

“I didn’t have to do that,” Miller said softly. “But you fought me. So I had to fight back.”

_No, you didn’t, you could have just stopped, if you really didn’t want to hurt me you would fucking stop._

“You’re so pretty, James. I shouldn’t have to ruin you.”

“Look at me, Miller!” James finally forced himself to speak. “Look at me! You’ve already ruined me.”

Miller smiled, rubbing James’s belly again.

“You mean this?” he asked, crouching down to kiss James’s belly. “No, no, this didn’t ruin you. This is beautiful.”

“I hate you,” James whispered.

“No, you don’t. You love me. You love how I feel inside you, touching you like nothing human ever could. You love me.”

“I. Hate. You.”

“You love me.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

And then Miller was inside him. And then Miller was everything, Miller was his whole world and there was nothing else, fucking him and holding him and James couldn’t even beg for mercy, he was just too much. He cried, and Miller kept going, and it didn’t stop and it wasn’t going to stop and there was no end because there was nothing else, nothing except _this._

**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**

And then it did stop. James woke up, sobbing and clutching his blankets, every part of him screaming with pain in some way or another.

It wasn’t really Miller, of course. The dream was worse than what Miller had actually done to him. And his belly was still nowhere near that big, although it might end up getting bigger. That thought was enough to scare James. The dream had just felt so real, like the nightmares from the original distress signal but more vivid and awful.

James zipped on his now ill-fitting hoodie and ventured outside. The air felt cool and freeing after the suffocating atmosphere of the dream. He walked out to the shed and found the transmitter from Miller’s ship still sitting there. He was a little upset with himself for leaving it outside, stupid to leave it where someone could find it and figure out it wasn’t from Earth.

Still limping from the memory of tearing pain in his thigh, James grabbed a shovel from the shed. He leaned against it for a moment, staring at the transmitter. It wasn’t making any noise that he could hear. He hadn’t even heard it when Miller had been contacted by the other alien. So it wasn’t like he was going to miss a message from Miller or anything.

James shouted as he brought the shovel down onto the transmitter. It dented, and the batteries flew off, but he wasn’t done. He slammed the shovel into the device over and over again, smashing it until it was unrecognizable. By the end he was crying again, but it felt good. He’d managed to destroy something of Miller’s, just like Miller had destroyed him.


	8. Chapter 8

_You shouldn’t be so upset about him._

Miller had heard that nearly constantly from the other alien in the ship since they left Earth. It was all the other alien seemed to ever think about around him. He couldn’t blame them, of course, considering all he thought about was James it would make sense that others would think about that when they heard his thoughts.

Miller had regretted leaving Earth almost immediately. He knew James wanted him to leave, because James was scared of his mating cycle and didn’t want to be bred over and over again for as long as they lived. Miller supposed that was natural. Of course James felt used. But Miller knew James could learn to love him despite that. Or even for that. He’d even said that to Miller, that he’d be honoured to assist with his mating cycle again. And then Miller told him he could be pregnant, and James had hated him.

He wanted to think James was just ignorant. Of course completing Miller’s mating cycle would end in him getting pregnant. Why would a species even have a mating cycle anyway if the purpose of it wasn’t to produce offspring? Sure, Miller could mate with someone who had biology that didn’t allow for conception, but James wasn’t that kind of partner. He should have known his own body.

But Miller also couldn’t have expected him to know that could happen even if they were two different species, right? Cross-breeds were a thing, sure, but Miller was from another planet. Another gene pool entirely. You wouldn’t exactly think there could be a crossbreed from that, but there didn’t have to be. Miller and his dual genetic material.

Dual genetic material wasn't exactly a sought after trait. Similar to his spinal ridges, they were accepted by general society, but members of his species generally preferred to spend their time with something else. Except with the ridges, that was more superficial. With his spine ridges, at least that was superficial-they were ugly. That was it. Dual genetic material, on the other hand, was generally avoided because potential partners didn’t want to risk actually getting pregnant during their mating cycle. Or at all.

It’s not like anyone could tell Miller had dual genetic material from the outside. Miller knew it was his responsibility to tell his partners, to make sure they knew they were risking pregnancy by choosing him. Too many times, Miller had been inches away from sex only to remember that little detail, and thus tell his partner about it. And inevitably some of them would be uncomfortable with the idea of getting pregnant and leave, not because they didn’t like Miller but because he just wasn’t worth the risk. He understood, of course, but it still hurt.

Miller was taken to a medical facility upon his return to Phoebe. He knew it because the alien escorting him was thinking it, and so everyone who passed him knew it too. The escort had attached a magnetic band to his arm, which was being pulled towards a similar band on their own arm, letting them drag Miller around without actually touching him. He was honestly surprised they weren’t transporting him in something more secure. If there was a risk of contamination, surely they’d want to make sure it didn’t spread?

A door opened in the tunnel wall, and Miller was dragged inside. The medical facility was bright and Miller squinted his eyes. His escort brought him to a little room within the facility, and set down on an exam table in the middle of the room. Another alien came into the room. A doctor.

_What is that? On your legs, covering your genitals like that?_

Miller stared down at his body. He was still wearing the underwear James had given him.

_We’ll need to take them off._

The doctor pulled out an instrument that resembled a pair of scissors. They pulled the waistband of Miller’s underwear away from his body and snipped down the fabric. Miller was almost upset to see them destroyed. He knew they didn’t mean anything, but that was still a piece of Earth they were destroying. They cut up the underwear until it could be lifted off him in pieces, and then they placed it in a container to be sent for testing. Miller was sad to see it go. They were taking that piece of Earth away from him.

_Will I get that back once you’re done with it?_

_It’s a foreign environment contaminant. It would be irresponsible to let a civilian keep charge of it._

_I’m not a civilian. I’m a security officer. I have a weapons permit._

_For the purposes of potentially hazardous material, you’re a civilian. And it’s not like it’s functional anymore. What are you going to do with a bunch of little bits of garbage?_

_It was a gift. From a friend._

The doctor bowed their head, exhausted with Miller’s stupidity.

_You made a friend on Earth?_

_A human. James. He was kind and gentle and he was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen._

_You found an animal you liked._

_He wasn’t just an animal._

The doctor sighed, clearly not in the mood to argue with Miller. They opened a box next to the exam table and pulled on a set of rubbery claw-covers. Like gloves, but they only went over the doctor’s claws. The covers were for sanitary reasons-Miller’s skin was too thick for scratches to be a concern.

_Shouldn’t you be decontaminating me?_

The doctor nodded, grabbing the lead to Miller’s magnetic bracelet and lifting him off the table. They dragged him into a smaller room within the exam room and tossed him unceremoniously to the floor. A mist of cold liquid came from the walls of the little room, drenching Miller and stinging his eyes. It felt weirdly violating. The disinfectant coated his skin, stripping any last remnants of Earth from his body. He felt naked, incomplete. The soft, warm smell of James no longer clung to his body, and he realized he hadn’t even noticed its presence until it was masked and stripped away by the cruel chemical stench of disinfectant. Miller cried softly.

He was suddenly snapped out of his spiralling sadness when the doctor pulled on the magnetic lead again, yanking him to his feet. Disinfectant still clung to his skin, making him feel gross and damp. The doctor laid him back onto the table. They dragged their claws through his hair, which was greasy from not having washed it in days as well as slightly damp and sticky from the disinfectant. The doctor prodded at his chest and over his ribs, and Miller felt sick. It reminded him of James, but the touch was all wrong. The gloved claws were hard and didn’t have a pleasant texture, nothing like James’s beautiful, soft, gentle hands. He missed James’s hands so much, James had hardly touched him and he knew he’d never be fulfilled by a touch from his own species again. Hard leathery claws were so rough and cold compared to the gentle hands of a human. Miller found himself recoiling away from the doctor’s touch as they prodded over his body, it felt wrong and bad and disgusting.

The doctor’s hands moved down to his tentacles and Miller shrank away, rolling over on the table. He didn’t want anyone else’s hands on those sensitive organs, not ever again. It just wouldn’t feel right, not after James had held them in his shy and curious hands, letting the frills curl around his little fingers and stroking them so gently. All other touch felt harsh and cruel compared to those soft, perfect hands.

_You’d rather some extraterrestrial animal touch those than a member of your own species?_

_No. No, it’s not like that, just don’t touch them…_

_Your glowing patterns indicate you’ve had an active mating cycle recently. Presumably you haven’t mated, and waiting out an active cycle without suppressants can be dangerous. You need to let me look._

Miller cautiously rolled back over, exposing his tentacles. The doctor took hold of them, and he flinched. He had to fight his own body to not struggle away. Their hands were cold and their touch was firm, not in the nervous clinging way that James had held his tentacles but just rough and unfeeling. Miller whined. The doctor gave him a weird look, it wasn’t really normal for his species to whine in that situation. It was a human reaction, and Miller was weirdly okay with that.

_You’re not sore or tender or anything. It almost seems like you’ve completed your mating cycle._

Miller tried not to think about it, he knew the doctor wouldn’t like the idea of what he’d done, but he couldn’t push it from his mind. The moment they mentioned completing his cycle, all Miller could think about was lying on top of James, burying his tentacles in his beautiful soft body and hearing the boy whine and moan in his ear as he clung to Miller, his fingers nestled between Miller’s spine ridges. He just wanted to go back, he just wanted to lie next to James again, to lie on top of him again, to feel his body around his tentacles again, to listen to those beautiful, sweet, human sounds he made.

_You did, didn’t you. You mated with that thing._

_Yes. I couldn’t help myself, you know what mating cycles are like, I didn’t want to hurt him and he let me and it was okay, I didn’t hurt him…_ Miller felt awful. He didn’t think he hurt James, but then again, if James got pregnant he had know way of knowing what it would do to his body.

_You’re an idiot. It was an animal. What you did… it doesn’t matter whether your mating cycle was active, what you did would be like completing your mating cycle with your pet._

_He’s not a fucking pet! He’s not the kind of animal you keep locked in a cage for your amusement, he had feelings and dreams and he wanted it, he asked me for it, an animal couldn’t do that._

_Don’t be stupid. We are the only superintelligent life within light years of here. Maybe that species can think and feel, but that doesn’t mean it’s of similar intelligence to us. That species isn’t capable of telepathic communication, or intergalactic travel, or any sort of medical developments that are normal for us, are they? Thinking, feeling, it doesn’t matter. What you did was practically bestiality. You should be ashamed of yourself._

Miller was more than ashamed of himself. He hated himself, he hated that he’d apparently been able to do something so horrible. He couldn’t imagine what that meant for James. A godly figure had fallen from the heavans and demanded access to his body, of course he’d let Miller do whatever he wanted. He didn’t know he had a choice. He didn’t know what Miller could do to him. Even though Miller would never hurt him, James didn’t know that. And he could hurt James, he knew that and James managed to figure that out too. He couldn’t imagine staring into the face of a god and trying his best to obey for fear of the thing’s horrific bodily weapons. It didn’t matter that she didn’t want to hurt James. He already had.

_What are you going to do with me? Am I going to be punished?_

_I’d say they’re probably going to take you off interplanetary security force. Obviously you can’t resist the urge to fuck anything the scientific teams come across._

_I didn’t just fuck him. I… I think I loved him._

_You contaminated an alien environment._

_I did what anyone would have done. You didn’t see him. He was so beautiful. He was perfect. He was more beautiful than anything any of us have ever seen._

_It doesn’t matter how beautiful it was. It’s a living creature. It’s not your toy. You don’t get to have sex with it just because it’s beautiful._

_I had sex with him because I loved him._

_That thing didn’t love you. It doesn’t feel the same as you do. It never will. You didn’t care about it. You just thought it was pretty so you stuck your tentacles in it. Do you know what that does to a human? Do you know what it does to their bodies when you do that to them?_

_No. What does it do?_

_I don’t know either. That’s why I don’t put my tentacles in alien lifeforms._

_He was fine afterwards. It didn’t hurt him._

_You don’t have dual genetic material, do you?_

Miller put his head in his hands.

_You inseminated that thing. You didn’t just fuck it. Of course you didn’t._

_What’s going to happen to him? Is it going to hurt him?_

_I don’t know. No one’s studied this species before. Except you, but you apparently didn’t get any more information than how pretty they are. Either their biology can support our young, or it can’t._

_What happens if it can’t?_

_The young dies. Or the host dies. Or both._

Miller felt himself crying again.

_Will it hurt? If it kills him, is it at least going to be painless?_

_It’s a parasite, essentially. Whatever happens, it won’t be comfortable._

_I have to go back. I can’t let him suffer alone like that._

_You are not going back. You’ve already hurt him enough._

_I know. It’s my fault. The least I could do is be there for him while he suffers through that._

_The least you could do is keep your goddamn tentacles out of the poor creature you already fucked to death._

Miller was crying now, tears soaking his palms and running down his arms. He was making those distinctly human noises now too, whimpering softly as the doctor listened, confused.

_You’re going to be kept here for a while to monitor you for any adverse effects from the alien environment. Your supervisor will be notified that you are alive and need a job relocation. You will not be under constant monitoring unless you demonstrate that you are a danger to yourself or your environment._

The doctor gave Miller one last wary glance before walking out of the room, leaving Miller alone with his thoughts.

Miller stared down at his body, at his rough gray-blue skin and clawed hands. He missed being human, or at least closer to human than he was. He shifted his hand down, retracting his claws into fingers and fading his skin to a pale grayish-tan. The skin was still more rough than human skin, but it looked closer. It seemed more gentle, more comfortable, even though it was unlike the appendage he’d had his whole life it almost seemed preferable. Miller ran the humanoid hand over his body, closing his eyes and remembering James’s touch. It wasn’t the same, but it reminded him of his love. He dragged his softened fingertips down his chest, over his stomach, and down between his legs. The frills on his tentacles wound limply around his fingers. It was nothing compared to James’s hands. He rubbed over his tentacles in vain for a few minutes, trying to feel something anywhere close to what he’d felt when James touched him, but he couldn’t. He never would again.

Miller stood up from the table and wandered around the room. Walking felt weird, the gravity on his home station was so much weaker than the gravity on Earth, and he stumbled a little bit as he explored the room. There wasn’t much there-gray metal floors, gray metal walls, gray metal exam table. He missed the pale yellow walls and brightly coloured sheets of James’s bedroom. He missed the soft bed and warm sheets and, more than anything else, he missed James’s body against his.

He stepped into the little room, the decontamination chamber, and stared into the dispensing jets. He shifted his hand back into a claw and stuck it into the jet, swiping the cold sticky disinfectant off with his finger. His claw scraped the metal of the jet. The whole thing was disgusting, but the unpleasant sensation distracted him from thoughts about James. Miller found himself tearing into the jet with his claws, ripping shreds of metal out of the wall socket. It hurt his hands, they were strong but they weren’t exactly meant for ripping up metal, but Miller didn’t care. He kept clawing at the chamber wall until a canister of disinfectant fell out of the wall, out of the gaping hole Miller had torn where the faucet used to be. There was so much destruction. He really was a monster, he’d just torn a gaping hole in a hunk of metal without a second thought, of course James would be afraid of him if that’s what he was capable of. Miller shifted his claws back into hands. He didn’t want to be a monster. He didn’t want to hurt James.

He didn’t want to hurt James. He never wanted to hurt him, he just wanted to love this beautiful creature and he’d destroyed him like he’d destroyed the chamber wall. Recklessly and mindlessly violent. It was his nature.

Miller sank to his knees. He was crying again. He had the feeling like he wanted to go home, but he didn’t care about returning to his home on Phoebe. That wouldn’t be any comfort. His home-his _house_ was nothing but another gray metal box, cold and featureless and desolate. Home was Earth. Home was James. And he couldn’t go home.

Earth was a place for humans. Miller should never have gone there. It was good he’d never encountered anyone else during his stay there, he’d probably have managed to fuck up the entire species. Miller wasn’t entitled to beautiful things. He knew he wasn’t. In fact, he should never have been allowed near anything beautiful. Maybe it was what it was, or who he was, but he couldn’t help it. He was destined to ruin things.

He imagined James, back on Earth, his belly bulging with alien life. The little twinkle of tears in his pretty blue eyes as he stared at himself in horror. The sickness and pain of having to carry a creature his body was never meant to handle. Miller started to sob as he thought of James curled up in bed, alone, crying softly to himself until his beautiful face was red and stained with tears, clutching his stomach and wondering why Miller would do this to him. Why Miller would ruin him like this.

_I didn’t mean to. I never meant to hurt you. You’re so perfect, you didn’t deserve this, I’m so fucking sorry._

Miller wondered if James would even look at him if he came back to Earth. As much as he wanted to be there for James, to comfort him through whatever horrors he’d inflicted upon the poor thing, he knew James probably hated him now. After everything Miller had done, he didn’t blame him.

The disinfectant was held in a clear container. It was yellowish and translucent. Miller nudged it with his fingers, and it sloshed around like water. There was an opening in the container that would have connected to the faucet, had Miller not torn it off. The liquid had leaked onto the ground, flowing down a drain in the floor. Miller placed his hand in front of the stream. The disinfectant stung the raw skin. He didn’t mind. It almost felt nice.

Miller lifted up the container and held it beneath his nose, taking a deep breath. It stung his nostrils and made him feel dizzy, but once again the feeling wasn’t entirely unwelcome. Miller inhaled again. Fumes like this were usually not good for inhaling. They tended to do some serious damage, particularly in the brain department. He wondered how long he’d have to sit there breathing in disinfectant fumes before he was of similar intelligence to James. He wondered if it would still be bestiality if he were in love with James then.

James probably wouldn’t appreciate the gesture. “I melted my brain with chemical fumes because I love you” was not really a line that ended well. If the damage from the chemical fumes alone didn’t make him seem insane enough, that line certainly would. But if it meant he could be with James, Miller would do it. He’d give anything to see that beautiful creature again, to hold him and feel him and be with him. And he couldn’t.

Miller brought the opening of the container to his lips. He could taste the disinfectant fumes in his mouth. They were strong and sour and it felt like his tongue was melting. He didn’t know what he was doing, he just tipped the thing into his mouth and swallowed. His throat burned. He screamed, but it didn’t really sound like a scream. Why the fuck did he just do that? He didn’t really think he could dumb himself down to be with James, did he?

Miller felt sick. He coughed, and his throat burned. He threw up a spray of yellow liquid onto the floor of the chamber and onto his legs. He wanted to clean himself off, not with a spray of disinfectant but in a bath, with warm water. He wanted to go home. Somewhere that wasn’t the cold metal floor of the medical facility, at the very least.

He awoke to feel himself being dragged across the floor and down a hall by the doctor from before, lifted by the magnetic armband.

_You attempted suicide. You’re being transported to a more secure location._

_No I didn’t. I don’t want to die._

_You tore a hole in a wall and drank half a bottle of disinfectant._

_I don’t want to die._

_What were you doing?_

_I just wanted to go back to Earth._

_You thought drinking toxic substances would get you back to Earth?_

_I thought if I was stupid… if I wasn’t on a higher level than him, mentally, it wouldn’t be wrong for me to be with him._

_You’re already stupid enough. And it’s probably already dead._

_He’s not dead. He can’t be. It’s only been a few days since I did that, it wouldn’t have killed him that fast._

_You don’t know how his body reacts to that. Alien life is a fragile thing. That’s why you can’t mess with it like that._

Miller closed his eyes, tears still running down his face. James really was so fragile. His beautiful, beautiful little body couldn’t possibly withstand much, especially with such soft skin and delicate hands. He was so perfect, so fragile, and Miller was destroying him. Miller might’ve already killed him. He felt sick, and not just because of the cleaning fluids still resting in his throat and stomach.

The doctor tossed him into another metal room, this time with a bed instead of an exam table and not much else. They held out another armband, and Miller tried to scurry away, but he was cornered. The second magnetic band was attached to his wrist, and the bands stuck together, pinning Miller’s wrists together. Miller looked up at the doctor sadly.

_You’re staying in here until we can trust that you won’t go around breaking anything else. Keep your claws to yourself._

And so Miller stayed. He sat in the corner of the room leaning against the wall, thinking about James. He imagined being with James in that moment, pressed against his soft, warm body. Miller imagined resting his hand (shifted so it wasn’t a claw, of course) on James’s belly, whispering to him that it was going to be okay, that he’d do what he could to make sure the thing didn’t hurt him. And then he’d kiss James all over his pretty body, and James would mewl with pleasure and grab Miller by the shoulders and pull him in closer. And James would kiss him, gently and quickly, and Miller would try to pull him closer to get more contact from those lovely pink lips. And everything would be okay.

Miller didn’t think he’d really stopped crying since he’d left Earth. There were moments when his tears dried up, but those were just brief pauses before he started whimpering again. He never felt like he stopped. Crying had felt good at first, it felt good to let out all his sadness and anger and uncomfortable feelings about James. But now it was just painful. His eyes stung with tears, and his burned throat hurt even more whenever he made a sound. He supposed he should try and stop making those noises, it wasn’t natural after all, but it made him feel closer to James. The sounds Miller made were nothing like James’s of course, but they shared a basic little similarity. Miller’s species didn’t make that noise when they were upset, and humans did.

Maybe Miller wanted to be human. James wouldn’t have been afraid of him if he was human. He wouldn’t have had to do what he did if he was human. It would have been okay for him to be with James if he was human. He never would’ve had to leave Earth. He could’ve stayed in that beautiful home with that beautiful creature forever and ever.

Someone else came in a while later with a dish of food. It tasted like oatmeal, but even more bland. Miller could hardly stand it. Even though that was what he’d eaten his whole life, he couldn’t stomach it. He missed Earth food.

_My hands hurt._

_Your hands are bound because you destroyed the wall in the other room. If you didn’t want the bands you shouldn’t have broken a hole in the wall._

The other alien watched as he sipped the smooth brownish paste from the canister. It was vile. Miller felt sick. He couldn’t finish the meal. The other alien stared at him for a few minutes longer before taking back the canister and leaving the room.

Miller pulled his arms apart. His muscles strained, and his hands came apart an inch of so before snapping back into place. He smashed his wrists against the floor. It didn’t even make a dent, in the cuffs or the floor. Miller walked up to the door and slammed his wrists against that. It hurt, but he persisted, smashing the magnetic cuffs against the door. The metal in the room wasn’t magnetic, that would probably end quite painfully, but the alien alloy his species used as a building material wasn’t magnetic. Just strong.

Eventually the metal by the door lock started to bend. Miller shoved his claw in the gap between the door and the frame, tearing at it as he had his ship. The metal of the door was thicker than the metal of the ship, and his claws were already sore from ripping up the other wall, but he didn’t care. He didn’t exactly know what he would do when he got out-go home? Drink another bottle of disinfectant?-but he knew he had to get out. The door buckled under his claws, and the gap widened just enough that he could get through. His spine ridges scraped against the door frame, and he winced. Most of his body hurt in some way. But he was out.

He walked down the dark maze-like halls of the medical facility, moving quickly and keeping an eye out for anyone else walking down the hallway. Eventually he made it out of the facility and into the main halls of the station.

The station was composed of a winding array of high-ceilinged rooms and tunnels, some with windows displaying a view of the outside. The big rooms were well-lit, but the tunnels were dimmer. Miller didn’t spend a lot of time on station, most of his time was actually spent on missions, but there were some signs and maps around the tunnel system he could follow. His species didn’t really have a complete language, so most of the signage was symbols representing food, different kinds of employment facilities, residential zones, and shipyards. Miller walked in the direction of his residential zone for a few minutes before realizing he didn’t want to go home. The cuffs on his arms were digging into his skin, and he figured he should get them off. There were latches on the sides, he figured if he managed to find something long and thin to stick under the latches he could pry them off. He started walking in random directions, taking turns at random, his brain on autopilot.

Suddenly, he tripped over something. He reached out to stop his fall, but his hands were bound and he fell right on his face. He was barely even annoyed at this point. Just a little more pain on top of all the other things that hurt. Miller struggled to his knees and looked down at what he tripped over. It was a box of tools. Miraculously, there was a long metal rod with a flat end amongst the scattered tools. He grabbed it, and twisted it in his hands until he managed to get it under the latch and flick it open. He wiggled the cuffs off his wrists, and wrung his hands. Even though most of his body was still in pain, it felt like relief.

Miller stood all the way up, staring at the large room he’d ended up in. It was a ship bay.

He practically leapt towards a small ship at the end of the bay, rushing on board without a second thought. The ship thankfully didn’t have a biometric passcode, and he managed to flick it on easily. Miller knew the basics of piloting a ship. The navigational system was fairly self-explanatory. He signalled for permission to exit port, and the gates opened. His claws twitched with excitement. He was going home.

He launched at near maximum acceleration away from the station. Best to get away before the medical staff noticed he was gone. The force of the acceleration pushed him into the chair, battering his sore body even more, and Miller was too elated to care. He shifted himself back into his more human shape, and thought of James as his stolen ship sailed towards Earth.

He was going home.


	9. Chapter 9

James awoke to a noise like thunder.

He sat up in bed, and his stomach ached in protest. He groaned and rubbed the sore, stretched skin beneath his nightshirt. He’d been wearing a shirt to bed. He didn’t like waking up in the morning and seeing his swollen belly in the mirror.

He laid in bed for a while, wide awake, staring at the ceiling. It was two in the morning, far too early to get up and start his day, but he couldn’t get back to sleep. He slowly crawled out of bed, pulled on his sweatshirt, and tiptoed out of his room.

It had been a while since he’d taken a nighttime walk around the farm. He’d been avoiding the shed and the solar array because they reminded him of Miller, and now being on his feet for too long made him nauseous. This wasn’t the first time he’d woken up in the middle of the night, of course, these incidents had been increasing in frequency as the alien thing in his belly grew. Usually there wasn’t a loud noise waking him up, but he wasn’t really sure if he’d actually heard that noise or if it was just a bad dream.

James had taken to making himself midnight snacks whenever he woke up in the middle of the night. It felt depressing and shameful compared to his midnight walks, but midnight walks hurt and cookies were delicious and he was in pain, he deserved a goddamn cookie. After all, he figured it was only a matter of time before the alien parasite started sapping nutrients from his body. He needed to eat more, or the thing was going to starve him.

That night, however, James just couldn’t bring himself to go to the kitchen. Sure, walking around made his stomach churn and his legs sore, but this was just the beginning. He’d only been carrying Miller’s alien spawn for a month or so, surely things were going to get worse. May as well get a walk in before he was in too much pain to stand.

James pulled on his sneakers, sitting on the ground to tie them. He had to stare down past his belly while he put his shoes on, and he hated looking at it. The growth was definitely showing now, there was no denying it. Maybe he had plausible deniability with his sweatshirt on, but he wouldn’t for long. The worry alone was agonizing. He had no idea what he was going to tell his parents. Getting rid of the thing would involve being in a hospital for longer than he could reasonably excuse. Or doing some potentially serious harm to himself, which might have ended with him in the hospital anyway. And that was if getting rid of it was even possible. Keeping it meant getting sicker. If they didn’t notice his growing belly, they’d surely notice when he was too weak to stand, lying in bed all day trying not to puke his brains out, getting sicker and weaker by the day. And that was just the things he expected. He had no idea what kind of awful shit came with an alien pregnancy. His only point of reference was horror movies, so that meant a lot of blood and being permanently disfigured or killed by the thing. It would definitely be difficult to hide the bloody mess of his stomach bursting open.

He walked away from the house, away from the solar panels and the shed and the farm, towards the woods at the edge of the property. His feet hurt, his legs hurt, the extra layers of clothes were suffocating. He knew he would probably feel better if he just went back home, but for some reason he thought taking a walk would make him feel less sick.

Then he saw something smoking in the woods at the edge of the property.

James squinted his eyes, not really believing his own eyes. Maybe he was hallucinating. He walked closer to the woods, and the smoke looked pretty clear. He smelled something burning. His instinct was to run, but he knew he couldn’t do it. He walked as fast as he could manage, his legs aching and his stomach flipping. He stopped to breathe at the edge of the woods, sinking to his knees and breathing quickly and heavily, resting a hand on his belly. He still felt like throwing up, but he had to get to the woods. He had to see what was burning before it ruined the entire farm.

When James found the source of the smoke, he was certain he was hallucinating.

The thing looked like Miller’s ship, but it was bigger. It was even more imposing than Miller’s ship, and he felt his hands starting to shake with fear. He rubbed his eyes and stared up at the dark metal monolith. It wasn’t on fire, just smoldering a little bit, so it wasn’t like it was going to burn down the forest. Still, James was terrified. Probably more scared than if there was an actual forest fire.

“Miller!” he shouted, darting his head back and forth looking for that blue glow. He was sweating, not just from the nausea and stifling sweatshirt but because he was terrified. He wanted to run again, the other way this time, but he knew he’d collapse the moment he tried. But he was so scared. Part of him was convinced it was another dream, that Miller was going to step out from behind the trees and claw his clothes off and rub his tentacles over him. James turned and ran.

He made it about ten strides before collapsing to his knees. He threw up into the dirt. The muscles in his legs burned. He felt something brush over his shoulder, soft and feathery at first but it gradually got more firm, stroking over his shoulder blades and down his back. James felt sick, not like he was a few minutes before, this was worse; he felt purely and utterly violated.

“Miller,” he said. It was meant to be a scream. It was decidedly more of a whimper.

“It’s okay,” Miller whispered. “You’re gonna be okay.”

James wailed in exasperation.

“Get your fucking hands off me!” he cried. “I thought you left for a reason. I thought you said it would be good for both of us if you left. What happened to that? You just couldn’t keep your tentacles off me? Was what you did not enough?”

“James…” Miller’s voice was sweet and gentle. It might’ve even been comforting coming from anyone else.

“I feel like shit, Miller,” James said, turning toward Miller. Tears were streaming down his face. “Look at me, Miller. Look at me. Look what you did to me.” James lifted up his sweatshirt, revealing his belly.

“Oh.” Miller stared at James’s stomach. He reached his hand out towards him, not a claw but still threatening. James slapped it away.

“Don’t touch me! You don’t get to fucking touch me.”

“James, I’m sorry.”

“Are you? Are you sorry? If you’re sorry, why the hell did you come back?”

“Because I love you. I want to take care of you while you go through this.”

“You’re not going to take care of me. You’re just going to hurt me. You’re acting all sweet now, but then your mating cycle is going to happen again. And then you’re going to sit there and beg me to let you fuck me. And I’m gonna have to listen to you tell me how much it hurts you, and how you’re going to hurt me if I don’t let you. And you’re gonna whine about how you love me and you just want to stay with me, and then I’m gonna spend the rest of my life letting you breed me. Is that right? You’re not just going to take care of me until this is over and then go home. You can’t do that.”

“There are cycle suppressants on the ship. Enough for… I don’t know. Years, maybe. You’ll be safe.”

“Is that even going to be enough? Even if your dick things aren’t telling you you need to fuck me, what’s your brain telling you? Your mating cycle isn’t happening right now, and you still came to find me. What do you want from me, Miller? Is this a thing your species does? You go around the solar system collecting little mating pets?”

“No. Of course not, are you kidding me? I love you, James. You’re so beautiful and sweet and perfect. I went back to my planet and I couldn’t stand it. The food is disgusting, everything’s just dark and gray and metal and no one is as pretty as you. My species is awful. You’ve seen me. All rough edges and leathery skin and claws. After I met you, after I saw you and held you and… did those things with you, I can’t ever be with my own species again.”

“Fuck you, Miller. I don’t care how pretty you think I am. I’m not going to be fucking pretty when your alien baby rips my body apart.”

“That’s not how my species gives birth. You’re going to be okay. I’ll be there with you. I’ll help you. It’ll be okay.”

“It’s not okay, Miller. It’s not going to be okay. What do you think this thing is going to do to me? It’s been a month and I already feel like I’m dying half the time. What happens when it’s fully grown?”

“It’ll be okay,” Miller repeated.

“No. You don’t know that. You have no fucking clue what this thing is going to do to me. What _you_ did to me. You could’ve killed me.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I feel awful. You’re so beautiful, I just feel awful I destroyed something as beautiful as you. The least I can do is be there for you.”

“Fuck you, Miller. Fuck you.”

“James, please-”

“Fuck you!” James picked up a stick off the ground and jabbed it in Miller’s direction. Miller stretched toward him at the same time, and to his horror James plunged the stick into Miller’s chest. Miller fell to his knees. Blue liquid dripped from his chest, not glowing but shiny and dark, deep blue blood. Miller didn’t even look angry. He just looked sad.

“Oh my god,” James muttered. “Oh, god, I didn’t mean to. Miller, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“I know,” Miller replied calmly. He pulled the stick out of his chest. He held his hand over the wound, blood pouring down his chest and over his fingers. James moved closer to him, placing his hand over top of Miller’s.

“What do you mean, you know?” James asked. He was still wary of Miller, but now he was much more worried about the potential alien corpse in his backyard.

“My species communicates through thought. I always know what you’re thinking.”

James’s eyes widened, but he kept his hand on the wound.

“Always?”

“Yes. Before I even saw you, I could hear you. Your mind. Humans aren’t very good at keeping their thoughts organized. It’s kind of cute.”

“That’s creepy.”

“I knew you were scared of me. I tried to be gentle with you, because you were so beautiful and I didn’t want to scare you. I really did my best. It was so great when you were interested in me. When you touched my spine ridges, or my tentacles. You were a little scared but you were fascinated with me and it was so sweet. And when I fucked you, it was so lovely. The way you think during that, you have no idea how beautiful it is. And those noises you make, my species doesn’t make noises like that and I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to… to do that with one of my own species again, without hearing those cute little noises.”

James narrowed his eyes.

“You’re a creep, Miller. I should really just leave you here to die.”

“But you can’t.”

“I know.” James hated that he couldn’t walk away, he couldn’t just let Miller bleed out in the woods and be done with him. But he couldn’t do it. The truth was that some small part of him cared about Miller. He had to. And he really did believe Miller was sorry, and it would be nice to have someone who knew what was going on help him through this alien pregnancy.

And Miller was beautiful. He hated to admit that, but it was true. Miller must have known he thought it, no point in denying it to himself any more. He stared into Miller’s glowing eyes. The alien was still looking at him sadly, like he was just sad that James had stabbed him.

“Please tell me you have magical healing powers or something,” James said.

“No magic. I don’t think it’s too deep though.”

“Are you sure? You’re bleeding a lot.”

“I bleed a lot. It’s okay.”

“Do you really know what’s okay?”

“Hm. Not really.”

“You know what? We should go inside. I can… I can get you cleaned up.”

“You said you wanted me to go away. You never wanted to see me again.”

“Miller…” James thought about it, and he realized he didn’t. He didn’t want Miller to leave. He cared about Miller. The alien was terrifying, but he was also beautiful. Miller had a point-it hurt to ruin something beautiful.

“It’s okay. I get it.”

James nodded. Of course he got it. Of course.

Thankfully Miller was able to stand on his own even with the seemingly very painful wound in his chest. James wouldn’t have been able to support his weight. He still felt a little dizzy. Miller took his hand, holding him up. James didn’t push him away. It was nice to be held up like that. It was nice that Miller knew what he needed.

James brought Miller into the bathroom and sat him down on the edge of the bathtub. Miller watched him closely as he dug through the medicine cabinet and pulled out a big square bandage. He pulled a washcloth out of the cupboard, and got it a little damp before turning to Miller.

“You don’t have to do this for me,” Miller said. “I can handle myself.”

“I did this. I can clean it up.”

James dabbed the washcloth over the wound in Miller’s chest. The bleeding had mostly stopped at that point, and Miller was right-it wasn’t actually very deep. He had forgotten how weird and bony Miller’s chest was, and he was a little disturbed by it, but he tried not to be. He diligently wiped the blood off Miller’s chest, opened the bandage, and stuck it over the wound. It was plenty big. The wound wasn’t nearly as bad as he thought it was. He must’ve just been scared. He ran his hand over Miller’s chest for a moment after he’d bandaged the wound. Miller’s skin was weirdly leatherry, but it wasn’t exactly unpleasant.

“So now what?” Miller asked. “My ship is broken. Should I just go… live in the woods?”

“No. You don’t have to go live in the woods. You said you had cycle suppressants, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You can take them. I broke your transmitter thing, but you can stay here until we figure out a way for you to call home again.”

“I can’t call home.”

“What? Why?”

“I sort of stole that ship. And broke out of a medical facility.”

“Jesus, Miller.”

“It won’t help if I tell you I did it because I wanted to see you again, will it?”

“No. No, it doesn’t. I mean, I don’t care what you did on your planet, but… god, what’s wrong with you?”

“I love you. I couldn’t stay there, I never would’ve been able to feel how I feel with you. I couldn’t live like that.”

“You really are a creep.”

“I’m sorry. I just care about you so much, after I realized what I did to you I just couldn’t leave you alone.”

“You could’ve left me alone.”

“No. I couldn’t.”

James sat down on the toilet, looking Miller in the eyes. He lifted his sweatshirt again,

“Look at me.”

Miller reached a hand out towards his stomach, and James didn’t push him away. He rested his hand on James’s belly, running his fingers over the sensitive flesh.

“I’m sorry,” Miller whispered.

“I know. It’s okay.”

Then someone knocked on the door.

James held his breath. He looked at Miller, and Miller looked just as terrified as him. The door was unlocked, and before either of them could think to do anything, Mother Elise stepped through the door.

“James, I heard you get up, is there-” Her eyes landed on Miller, and she put her hand over her mouth.

“I can explain, I swear,” James exclaimed. But he couldn’t explain. He didn’t know what to say.

“Who… what are you?” she asked. Miller stood up. James had forgotten just how shocking parts of Miller’s appearance were. He couldn’t remember if he’d been more or less scared of Miller when he’d first seen him, but he had definitely been scared.

“You’re not going to believe me,” Miller said.

“Just give me a goddamn explanation,” Elise grumbled.

“I’m an alien.”

Elise considered that for a moment. She looked Miller up and down.

“Well. I suppose that does explain some things.”

“He’s not dangerous,” James chimed in. “His ship crashed here. I know him. I… I care about him.”

“I’m not going to hurt him,” Elise said.

“May I stay here?” Miller asked. “I can eat Earth food. I can put on some pants if you want.”

“Hm. I suppose there’s already nine of us here. We’ve got plenty to share.”

“Thank you. I promise I won’t be too much trouble.”

James gave Miller a look. He figured now was as good a time as any.

“We’re sort of together,” he blurted out.

“Oh. Alright,” Elise replied.

“I’m having his kid.”

“Oh. Oh, dear.”

“I’m sorry, I should’ve been more careful. I don’t know if I’m going to keep it, I don’t know if I can-”

“Jimmy, darling, it’s alright. It’s okay.”

James looked down at the floor. His hands were clenched into fists and he was breathing heavily.

“If you love this…”

“Miller,” Miller offered. “My name is Miller.”

“If you love Miller, you can be with him.”

“He can stay,” James half-muttered.

“Of course, darling.”

James nodded.

“You look tired,” Elise said. “How about you and Miller get back to bed?”

James nodded again. Miller took his hand and squeezed it gently.

Miller guided him back to his room. It felt weird, but he was okay with it. Miller didn’t really want to hurt him. Miller cared about him. He snuggled up to Miller in bed, his face against Miller’s bony chest.

He didn’t know what was going to happen next, but he was starting to believe Miller. It was going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading if you managed to finish this! I know it's a mess and I'm bad with endings but I really enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoyed reading it too. Kudos/comments are greatly appreciated.
> 
> Also, there's a little more alien porn in the epilogue if that's your thing.


	10. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a bonus smut chapter with no bearing on the plot. It didn't fit into the story as a whole but I felt like I had to get some use out of Miller's tongue ;)

James loved kissing Miller.

He was nervous about it at first, something about pressing his lips against that weird glowy mouth felt wrong, but the moment that lovely glowing tongue slipped into his mouth all his nerves melted away. Miller’s tongue was long, and it twisted wildly in his mouth. James loved letting Miller lay on top of him, bucking his hips against him and whining as Miller’s tongue fucked his mouth.

And of course he had even dirtier thoughts about that tongue. Thoughts he was sure Miller heard, which made him even more ashamed of them.

He’d never ask Miller to eat him out. It wasn’t a thing his species did, he probably wouldn’t even know where to start with it. He had to keep himself content with Miller’s tongue in his mouth, licking deep into his throat. But he couldn’t ignore those other thoughts, and evidently Miller couldn’t either.

“You really want me to use my tongue down there?” he asked, his voice deep and breathy. James barely even registered what he was saying at first, he wanted Miller’s tongue back in his mouth. He pulled MIller towards him and moaned into his mouth.

“James…” Miller drawled, keeping his tongue in his mouth. Such a goddamn tease.

“You know what I want,” James said.

“You really think that would feel good?”

“Of course it would feel good. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“I wanna make you feel good. If you want me to, I can try.”

James looked at Miller with wide eyes.

“Please?”

Miller nodded, smiling as he slid down James’s body. James bent his knees up and spread his legs, and Miller moved his head down between his thighs. James stared down at his soft glowing eyes. It was nice to be able to see Miller down there-the alien baby was gone, he didn’t have to worry about that. He’d gotten rid of it, and Miller had been taking his mating cycle suppressants, and he could do whatever he liked with his beautiful alien boyfriend.

Miller darted his tongue out of his mouth like a snake, licking a stripe of bluish spit down James’s belly. James moaned softly as he dragged his tongue over his skin, licking at his thighs and over his folds. Miller blinked softly once he’d actually gotten a taste of James’s cunt.

“It… probably doesn’t taste very good,” James muttered. He wanted to tell Miller he didn’t have to if he didn’t want to, but he couldn’t bring himself to say that. He was too excited.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Miller replied. He licked at James’s clit, flicking it with his tongue. James grabbed at the back of his head and pulled him in closer. He didn’t want to be teased, he didn’t want to wait any longer.

And Miller knew this. So Miller kept him waiting, licking over his hole but keeping his tongue out just long enough to make James crazy. He gripped Miller’s hair, pulling on it just enough to annoy him.

“You’re such an asshole, Miller,” James sighed.

“Mhm,” Miller replied. “You really want this, don’t you.”

“Fuck, _please!_ ”

Miller nodded, finally darting his tongue into James. He fucked his tongue into James, and James whined and squirmed beneath him. He didn’t hold back on his whines and moans, he knew Miller liked when he made sex noises.

Miller’s tongue twisted and curled as he fucked it in and out of James. He licked desperately at James’s walls as he dragged his tongue in and out, licking over every surface inside him. His tongue got deep too, James had never actually seen it fully extended but it had to be a good few inches judging by how deep Miller was licking him.

“Deeper,” James whined. “That’s so good, it really is, just… more, please, more.”

Miller did his best to give James what he wanted. He licked as deep into James as he could, until it felt like he really couldn’t get his tongue any deeper. His lips were pressed against James’s clit, and he rubbed against Miller’s face. His lips were softer than the rest of his skin and they felt so good, it was so much. He gripped Miller’s hair tightly and let out a long whine as he came.

Miller slipped his tongue out of him. It felt obscene and beautiful. He looked up at James with his sweet, glowing eyes.

“Was that good?”

“Yes! Fuck, yes it was good. Miller, your tongue… god, it’s amazing.”

“That didn’t taste that bad, you know.”

“See? Your species really loses out not doing oral.”

“Guess they’ll never know how great it is now.” Miller kissed James’s clit one last time, and James whimpered.

“Kiss me,” James demanded, pulling gently on Miller’s shoulder. Miller laid on top of him again. He darted his tongue into James’s mouth, and James moaned.

“You never get tired of this, do you,” Miller said, smiling down at James.

“Of course not. Keep kissing me.”


End file.
